Of Blood and Oil
by Typewriter King
Summary: Complete three part geopolitical template for future short stories. Pits Oz, under vampire control, against the plutocratic Alliance in a Cold War scenario.
1. Bloodletting

Dear Readers, this is work of fan fiction, a piece of literature based on the licensed series _Gundam Wing_. Bandai and some other people have rights to the series and all related copyrights, but they do not forbid the non-profit writing of fan-based literature.

This is non-yaoi, though a yuri element may or may not see final submission. Viscount and I wrote this work of experimental art, therefore this isn't necessarily meant to appeal to a large audience, as commercial writing is.

I, Typewriter King, began this as a means to discover new devices for better telling a story. I'm convinced the written word as a medium still hasn't reached it's artistic potential, after all these millennia, though different people, since before Homer, have tried their best.

Please keep in mind I'm trying something new, when and if you review this.

Despite the title, this is not something as cheap as a political statement dressed in a work of fiction. This isn't vitriol, it is lighthearted. Any resemblance to real or perceived events in reality are coincidental. The "Blood" in the title is a reference to vampires, and the "oil" has more to do with a classic television show than Iraq.

If I wanted to be that sort of fiction writer, I'd become a journalist.

Like the Russian author Tolstoy, if someone told me I could write a book that would sway a reader's political thinking to my way of thinking, I wouldn't consider writing worth the effort, but if another person told me I could pen characters that readers would cherish enough to share with their children and grandchildren, then I would sacrifice everything to write that book.

-Typewriter King, **_fiction_** writer.

Casting: Quatre is the Robber Baron

Heero is the company network security expert

Une is the German cyborg

Noin is the transport Captain

Zechs is the Count

Relena is the Countess

Rashid is the Yowie (no reference to yaoi)

Afmad is the Israeli pilot

Auda is the dinosaur

Duo and WuFei will be the South African detectives

Trowa and Catherine with be the Uber Vampires

Treize will be the regent

Iria will be Quatre's sister (as usual).

Abdul will be the virus-writer

Nichol will work on Iria's security team.

Sally will also be on that team.

Septum will command the Alliance Space Forces, as usual.

Sanc's history will be that of Romania's

The United States will be referred to as the "Alliance," and the World Nation will be called "Oz."

Viscount co-wrote this.

**Prologue**

The old family rooster crowed it's five-part morning song as the sun crested over the huge untouched oaks in the east at the tree line marking the outer limits of the Winner family lawn.

Young Quatre slipped on his handed down boots as he did every morning. It's a very warm August morning in the Red River Valley, deep in America's heartland. The boy bolted from bed as he does every morning in the summer time, glad and ready to forge through every day that comes free of school.

He finds the aluminum birdseed pail on a thick birch stump, grabs fistfuls of the yellow dots inside, and scatters them to-and-fro on the barren dry earth, where chickens peck for seed even before any rains atop the beige dry crackly dead Bermuda grass of rural Oklahoma.

A giant dust cloud rolls in the valley below the Winner home. Its horn pleads for someone to trot over. Quatre pays no attention. That's just the special commuter bus that services the little cotton ball of Oklahoma dubbed "Little Dixie" by the founders of Roosevelt's "New Deal" man that founded the program that carried the same name.

It comes now and then, rather irregularly, to shuttle Iria to her vocational classes at Kiamichi Tech, where she's training to become a nurse. He watched his sister go. She carried a brown lunch bag, sagging with a sandwich and a fruit, probably. She walked casually, to the ire of the bus driver, who jabbed his horn again. She hustled a bit faster.

The chickens looked fine, so Quatre moved on to hefting another fifty-pound cellulous sack to the cattle. He removed one from the 18x15 red barn, a little dry structure full of cattle feed sacks. He latched one bag to his chest, wrapping his small arms around it in a bear hug, and clasped his fingers together on one side. This way he walked normally to the gridiron gate.

He dropped the bag through, and leaped over. The cows, a black heifer and a steer, the first bull he'd ever castrated all by himself, galloped over to their cluster of feed troughs, five blocks of wood Quatre had nailed together, and waited for the bag's contents. The bag's lip was seamed as poorly as usual, and Quatre barely had to give it a tug, before dried hominy dripped into the troughs.

The hominy will bloat the cows before Papa Winner hauls them to the stockyard for auction later. The heifer joyously wagged its ears around, seconds before digging its snout into the feed.

He took one last look, to make certain the cows didn't bully one another, and parted from that duty. They looked happy enough for PITA to approve.

Quatre left his home duties to stalk into the woods with his .199 BB gun, an old favorite silent hunting weapon. After twenty pumps, he felt the pressure could take the game he tracked. Dad said squirrels were the problem, but the boy insisted rabbits were the ones nibbling the tomatoes. He'd seen them bathe in the sun at the tree line a few times, and knew they didn't show up for social purposes. He tried pointing out the small Amarillo pellet feces, typical of bunnies.

Papa Winner scarcely looked, and stuck to his point. Quatre would see who had the right conviction.

I made sure I'd pushed in the safety before lining the front and back sights over the brown animal, kept the stock on my shoulder, even through with a BB gun, all you'd get would be a click as the sole sign you shot. It twitched its nose and hopped. I was thirty odd feet away when I hit that animal. I felt the electric itch on my wrist that told me I killed it, and strode over. The creature's little black eye stared blankly out at the world, not following movement as it should. I didn't find the hole on it, and figured the BB got it in the gut underneath. I had a little yarn and tied him to the muzzle of my gun, and let it limply rock at arms length.

When I walked a few feet, I saw something black dripping off its foot. I didn't know what that could be, but I remember Iria saying something about black blood dripping out of the liver, when shot. I don't know about that, 'cause I think she just wanted to scare me out of becoming a soldier when I grow up. I don't know what it matters what color leaks from someone when they're shot, but I know most soldiers don't ever see the other soldiers in a war, but to that she said that it happens, though, even if the news doesn't see it that way, 'cause the President only shows them bombings from planes and satellites, so it only looks like buildings are killed, and it's wrong to do that, and junk.

I may only be a kid, but if that were so, why would the news show video of them human shields talking about being killed, before we see the bombed buildings? Then Dad tells me not to talk about it, and that God forbids killing, unless the man being killed is killed for killing somebody's kids, and the court agrees. We have judges and juries to decide who lives and who dies, and that's the best way things can be, until God brings paradise back to the good believers, then we can let God kill all the bad people in fire, 'cause he makes the last judgment of everybody.

Anyway, I backtracked and found oil flowing from the ground, where I shot the rabbit, and thought that had been pretty cool. I pictured my cousin Dorothy, and thought maybe she'd pay attention to me now, and that I'd fix her up so she wouldn't be flat as Kansas anymore, and that I'd get her fixed up with Colorado on her chest, and get her fancy china dolls, like she always wanted, and maybe she'd forget about other boys, and I wouldn't have to go to war to get her attention.

I shouted at the house and ran for the door. Later I learned I hit a gusher of light sweet crude, that bubbled up from the bedrock after the Mississippi Earthquake.

No one in the Clan could have suspected this foul defilement of the most precious of Count Peacecraft's icons-by the Count himself!

Treize was sweating madly, and shuddering ever more violently.

"He was so honored to have won, He worshipped that trophy, he had swum the floods of Hades from one end to the other for it, braved Olympus, a-and trekked the slough for that prize; How could he? How could he sever the idol that had always been his goal?"

A spear-wielding guard stepped into the gothic tower prison cell, demanding the Regent's attention.

"Your Excellence, the _Espada_-Class Attack Submarine is making an unauthorized departure from the docks, it requires your attention."

Treize sighed, then nodded his pale face.

"I understand, relay the message to pursue with Katana-Class Escort Subs."

_This "Pilgrim's Progress" would be far harder than most_, thought the defector, glumly.

_Too bad you can't scheme your own railroad with mental power. Yep, too bad_.

It's too bad you can, if you're stupid enough to sale your very essence to a vampire cult. But such power can be avoided in the land of Mermen, and the _Espada _was what the heir of the Dracula Clan was going to prove it with.

An hour passed, giving the Count time to think.

He reflected on his flight from that previous life, in which he had betrayed the Clan in a bloody manner.

The escape was simple for him, and not completely his style, with variables that one couldn't eliminate.

But good humor crept back into his mind as Count Milliardo Peacecraft, known in chat-rooms as "IF," thought with dark humor of the poetic justice involved in the tool of surgical destruction he used.

The plan didn't require perfect timing, so he waited for the guards with the darkest records- sparing the more innocent ones- and cut them down with the tool hidden in the trophy.

The memories were becoming more vivid as the details came to mind.

Milliardo unscrewed the golden robed vampire from the base of the trophy, and slid the shining little cylindrical plasma fire-saber from its evil housing...

He remembered lighting it.

The blade was trimmed with a demonic red, with a dark orange being the interior color.

He wasted no time; once he felt the power pulsating through him.

...The guards. They were bruisers in leather helmets and gray jerseys. Their pants were black and tight, perhaps made of nylon and polyester.

...Most of the savagery was forgotten; all he could remember was the morphing fire blade, losing the neatness of a simple isosceles triangle as it "flared up."

...The next few minutes were a blank.

"Awe, that's it."

The Count recalled slicing open the utility-closet, and retrieving the fishing net.

Milliardo did the only thing he could do to avoid security, that is, scale down the tower for a few stories.

...Those moments only left feelings, and ones of panic at that...

"If" popped out of his recollections at that point.

"Too many blank spots, he said sadly, shaking his head.

"But it's over," he perked up.

Looking up from his bunk, he prepared to stake out the bridge.

1

"An estimated 400 persons are only dust, slowly being identified. Sir, so few are still

considered missing, and thus the list of suspects is dropping as quickly as the missing

list."

Intercom message from Bucharest Castle.

Once again, Treize breathed in the air of the Mediterranean, and felt the same warm glow of pride the Greco-Roman Fleet Commanders must have felt two thousand plus years ago.

The de'ja vu feeling of reincarnated glory summoned powers in him that made all of the nightmares of the situation worth it; almost.

Despite the setbacks, Treize was certain that he would be capable of managing the clan until Milliardo Peacecraft's understudy was ready to take the reins, and that would be fine.

And yet, revenge would be necessary.

Teize's vampire blood demanded it.

"Une, report," Count Peacecraft demanded. The cyborg named Une turned from her terminal and eyed the Romanian.

"_Sea Sparta _helicopters have pinged the towed array. We've cut power, and are drifting below operating depth; they'll never find us now."

At it's deepest, the Black Sea's floor dips beyond two thousand meters, a stretch below the ideal operating depths for a fast attack nuclear submarine. Furthermore, at the sub's currant location, warm Mediterranean waters flood through the strait, creating a shielding layer in the cold Black Sea.

Relena Peacecraft's diary provides an insight on just what happened in the tower that fateful episode when the Count escaped his chamber:

"Last night "If" asked me to insert a disk, and upload it into the Clan Network Server.

Something about a Trojan horse file, or something.

Then, after that, a strange request, pump wine up from the cellar to him.

After that, an hour, maybe, I don't know, a fire blazed everything, and the power went out.

I'm scared."

Milliardo debated the situation with Captain Une.

M: "Helicopters and patrol planes may not stay for long, but what about picket submarines and trawlers?"

U: "We may be immobile at the moment, but we can still fight."

The Count and the Captain discuss escape plans. Master Quatre had made it clear that Une evaluate Peacecraft's analytical skills during the journey.

"Er, I think we should adjust the dive planes, so we can bring the bow up, and attempt a start on the reactor, blow the ballasts, and rise out of this."

The German cyborg placed her hand under her chin, in deep thought, saying,

"Yes, I like it. However, I'd hate to do that immediately, See, I'd like to hide until we're in range of the _Katana _Class Escort Subs, which should be here in, uh-

A distant explosion rocked the Espada, demanding the Captain's attention.

"Status."

A technician spoke up.

"Sir, _Katana_ Alpha has struck a mine, and is currently surfacing."

Une popped a question at the tech.

"Was it our mine?"

The sonar systems operator confirmed it.

"Yessir."

So the seabed SOSUS-linked mine plugged one of the _Katana's._

Une summoned a passive sonar window on her personal terminal, then a window for the sonar detector network making up SOSUS, analyzing both simultaneously.

"Mr. Peacecraft, see that echo? Good. Fix its position while I contact the stern torpedo tube."

"Aye aye," Milliardo obeyed.

The Captain contacted the room, saying,

"Armament control, Load a mark forty-eight Evolved ADCAP torpedo, and fire upon point-" Milliardo speaks out of turn.

"At 6,8,5."

The Espada rocked as the mark forty-eight torpedo left the tube, but, worse, the launch gave away the position of the sub.

"Helmsman, raise the bow forty five degrees." Hitting a button, Une immediately contacted another section.

"Propulsion, attempt re-ignition, full speed ahead."

'Aye, Sir."

Sensors: "Captain, enemy torpedoes (are) homing in."

Captain Une sat still, with Mr. Peacecraft gripping her shoulder tightly.

"Captain, do something," Peacecraft said, with a nervous edge in his voice.

Une tapped an icon on her monitor, typed MAG, and pressed ENTER.

"Sir, passive sonar detects a wall of high energy noise, above and around us!"

Milliardo remembered the sonar tech's voice, as plain as telepathy.

The Count saw the Captain smile, a common victorious edge in it.

BOOM!

Contained in deep sea, the explosion's acoustic energy rushed through the ship, soon followed by the rushing tsunami.

"Ignition successful, reactor (at) full power!"

Captain: "Full blow, empty th' tanks! Weapons, blast propellant out the stern tube, asap!"

Cap' in had opened COM with everyone as the wave collapsed downward, toward the Espada.

As the sub reached operating depth, clearing the dreadful tsunami, the sub exploded upward, so did the field of battle, requiring a change in the Captain's orders.

"Wep' systems, release radar towed array, fire Sam's at targets of opportunity! "

As this was happening, Milliardo had an insight.

"MAG." She had a magnetic link with all the decoys out there," he exclaimed to himself privately.

"I guess we're in good hands."

Both _Katana _class subs have taken hits that have forced them to surface.

Great.

The _Espada_ is still running... and it had taken the time to blast some sub hunting craft out of the sky!

After all this, Treize could not accept this and go home.

The heir had to be destroyed, despite the resources lost.

"Seal up the straits, we'll tighten up on them with the older hunter-killer subs."

"So, Brother, where to next?"

Milliardo smiled in spirit, thinking that little sister Releana seemed to think this was a simple car trek.

"Down the Nile. It's only logical, since the Clan would cut off the routes out of the Mediterranean, so we must move out of the sea before the search party combs it all," he answered in an attempted conversational tone.

"So we're going to abandon the sub?"

Milliardo flinched. He hadn't been considering it a loss.

What had her line of thinking been?

He asked as much, and got,

"I was just thinking that the _Espada _had some value, and that we were going to salvage it somehow."

The great Count eyed the quarters that would usually belong to five commandos, and decided,

"It is entirely up to W.E. what to do with this submersible."

_I could jump and avoid the fate- whatever that is- waiting for me at the end of the Nile_.

Such thoughts entered the mind of the exiled Count Peacecraft, but no wheels were turning as gears, his thoughts having no teeth.

"How good is my Arabic anyway? And my Coptic? How far along the Nile are we? How extensive is the search?" The variables kept adding up, and escape didn't seem too promising anyway.

Best to ride it out.

Across the bare-steel gray room, Releana Peacecraft had her own thoughts.

"How could my brother have engineered an escape with the assistance of WE, an **American **company?

What type of deal did he make?

"I had better ask him."

She nimbly slid out of her bunk and walked across the room.

Milliardo Peacecraft was gently nudged out of a slumber he had barely been allowed to fall into.

Tiredly, he pushed himself up without opening his eyes, climbing to lean against a bulkhead. He opened his eyes and switched on a reading-light.

"Brother, wake up, I need to ask you some pressing questions," he was urged.

Eyes fully adjusted, he recognized his little sister, Relena.

Concerned, and not fully hiding it, he asked what was wrong.

"You have got to tell me about your contact with Winner Enterprises," demanded Relena.

"What's wrong with you?"

Winner Enterprises is a strange privately owned "Corporation," owned mainly by one man, but sales stock to the public in order to expand.

Sometimes, branches of the superpower are led by executives, but often, by the workers themselves, or the owner himself.

Many spy movies have been based on the owner taking over the world, but he could actually buy it, if he were inclined to do so.

"He seems to have been attempting to recruit me for a long time," ("He" being W.E.)

The Count whispered, "That's the impression I got from Une, when she secretly contacted me at my Black Sea vacation home a while back." (In the past.)

"So she told you that she would hijack the Espada, and that she would wait at a certain time to pick you up?"

Milliardo grimaced; Relena made it sound so easy.

"Yeah, she also gave me a plasma-saber, so I could improvise if whatever plan I came up with fell apart."

Relena leaned toward him.

"Did it fall apart?"

"Er, no, at least as much as I remember," he fumbled.

Despite Milliardo's vocal breakdown, Relena understood him.

"Do you know Winner's motive at all?"

She was prying from a blank source and she knew it.

"Thanks anyway, I'm glad we had this talk," she said, retreating to her own bunk.

"Awe," she sighed as she slid into her bunk, "I can't trust any of these dreadful conspirators."

2

Dear Journal,

If spotted north of Istanbul, chances of escape would have been nil, but thankfully, the mission went as smooth as ironed pants.

It's important to remember just how fragile you really are; not even a real Man of Steel can take much.

-Une.

The lovely _Espada_ drops an acoustic absorption pod prier to surfacing its conning tower on an early Egyptian morning on June twentieth, 2023.

At noon, the sun will be directly overhead, but right now it is gazing at the sub from a spot just over a sand dune.

Une is up and watching it from the CCD-periscope.

She could see a wedge shaped sunspot grow larger and ever larger until the sun stopped shining at all.

"Word," Une stretched out in awe.

The sunspot banked left, ending the illusion.

This black raven performed a difficult landing on top of the choppy Nile, dropping a cargo-bay door for a transfer of select crewmen.

"My Corona."

First Hand Account :Quatre Winner

"Upon landing, I remotely operated the rear cargo bay door.

While stepping out of my recliner, I signaled Auda, a troodon-cyborg special purposes agent of mine.

Five feet tall, and about the same distance in length, his appearance is reminiscent of a scaly horse-jockey.

Anyway, I signaled him to escort me onto the ramp of my black XB-70 super modified bomber, named _My Corona_.

It was determined that my appearance was needed to clinch the loyalty of vampire defector Count Milliardo Peacecraft.

My briefing reported that he was a mathematician of the genius level.

More interesting, he was a real vampire, and, a descendent of Count Dracula.

Also, along with him was his younger sister, Relena Peacecraft, Gymnast, and notable student of Karate.

It's all very fascinating."

Below, an entry from Relena Peacecraft's diary:

As I woke up, I felt tired, yet restless.

I felt a quiver in the air; someone of unheard importance was coming.

I didn't know if he was good or evil, but I knew it meant the end of our journey, aboard the _Espada_, and I felt the chill of dread for a few moments.

It was nearly five.

I had to stay awake!

I showered.

The water was hot, and that was the way I needed it.

Because of the chill.

It took the steam of a nuclear reactor to bake the chill out of me, it was that bad.

Fear is irrational, at least when it's the fear of the unknown.

I considered bailing again, (Author's note, her line of thought was similar to Milliardo's, when she was not pondering over If's involvement with W.E.) but I had exhausted the fear by the time I stepped out of the shower.

My dress was senseless.

I put on an Egyptian blue sweater with a Koala on it, and a cheerleader skirt.

How was I going to warm up with bare legs?

Highly skilled exile Peacecraft awoke at 5:30, and was highly stressed out.

He could feel things rapidly breaking down in his stomach, and heat coursing through his head and torso.

A stress related fever.

"Man, I gotta unwind," he moaned.

Moving under the showerhead, in the bathroom, he coaxed water out.

"Argh!" He yelled, "How could water be cold in an atomic sub?!"

After enduring freezes wrath, he put on black warm-up pants, one leg in, then the other, just like any mortal, then he pulled on a thick navy blue t-shirt.

"Forgot underwear," he breathed, remedying the problem.

"Now, about that hot water!"'

He rushed to find out about this odd occurrence.

The Count found Relena watching a "chick movie" in the cafeteria.

_How'd that get in a submarine?_

Eyeing the screen, Milliardo asked about it.

"Perhaps Captain Une placed it in here, thinking about my entertainment needs," while saying this, she smiled faintly, glad to see her big brother.

"So what's it called?" Milliardo was avoiding the hot water subject for reasons he didn't understand.

"It's called **Upward Lift**, and it's about this guy, Hiro, and he builds rockets in his garage, see, and a woman that is temporarily teaching literature at the local high school.

"IF", was smiling, as if humored.

"Don't laugh," she warned, "after various bazaar contacts, this substitute teacher named Silvia and Hiro begin dating," she paused and put on a serious expression.

": But trouble starts brewing," she said, in a theatrical tone of menace, "for a jealous student plots to kill Hiro and sabotage his projects-"

She gasped, and reached for the remote.

"Oh dear! Go back to where I was before!"

Milliardo laughed at how distressed his sister was about missing a bit of this movie.

"Quiet, Brother, must you always laugh at all of my tragedies!"

The young Captain Une abruptly entered, and coughed for attention.

Relena blushed, and stammered an excuse, but Milliardo displayed a cocky smile for the benefit of Relena, causing her cheeks to burn the air around her.

Une waited a moment before reporting.

"Ladies and gentlemen, **_My Corona _**has landed and is awaiting your appearance on the deck."

Upon hearing, Milliardo ran to the nearby coat rack, and grabbed a dark Prussian (midnight) blue hooded raincoat for use as a desert cloak.

Meanwhile, Relena followed Une to the deck, gravely, it appeared.

_She's worried_, Milliardo thought. _So worried, she forgot about the movie._

He pocketed the film thoughtfully, and caught up with the others into the new environment.

3

The first contact that follows cannot be covered from one point of view, so material must be barrowed from various sources, and rigid lines of distinction must be kept when concerning the sources.

Enjoy.

FIRST HAND ACCOUNT.

ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN **_GENDER AMOZONIA_**, A FEMINIST NEWSLETTER.

Narration by Quatre Winner: "The _Espada_ was already cabled _to My Corona _for well over ten minutes before I spotted Une, a counterpart of Auda, on the deck with Relena, Transylvanian exile, and directly behind, Milliardo.

I was instantly impressed with how protective she (Relena) was of her eighteen year old brother.

Only fourteen herself, she'd already gained recognition as a superb athlete, but hadn't quite earned my respect until then, placing herself between her brother and me; she was dressed for combat.

Wearing a blue sweater to keep her upper muscles warmed up, and a white cheerleader skirt that allowed maximum mobility, she was hiding her readiness to fight by not wearing a karate gi.

Although wearing her long light hair loose, I doubt even Auda could have been able to grab it, should a fight have broken out."

The rest of the Winner story is original material, never before seen.

It could almost be a continuation from the end point of the _Gender Amazonia _article.

"...I could go on all day about the deception of her {sic} clothing, since it gave a better impression of her character than Milliardo's, - he was wearing a black cloak and black pants.

It seems that he was building an image for himself, but the gothic stuff didn't work in 2023, and it doesn't work now.

Twenty years ago, maybe, he would have given the impression of being a tough guy...

(Lost material.)

Auda and I stepped off the ramp as I greeted my guests.

I said "hi," then acknowledged Une's success in delivering them {Sic} and the _Espada_ back safely.

Intimidated by my stunningly handsome looks, Relena turned away shyly, and so, I finally got to shake the Count's hand.

"It's an honor to meet you like this, Sir," he said, smiling with a controlled giddiness.

It was as if I were his hero or something.

His skin was fair and flawless, (light, even for a Caucasian). His hair was as light as my jet's color is dark, and he was around 185cm tall. Weight was a little light, judging from his build.

He spun around on his heel, and introduced me to Relena, who was smiling as if in the company of close friends.

"Hello Mister Winner, Milliardo and I thank you for the excellent extraction," she said, as a diplomat might.

I noted that her handshake was as firm as Milliardo's, and that the blueness of her eyes matched the color of the water surrounding Tahiti. The most striking feature about her was a star shaped scar on her left cheek, which is said to have come from a cookie-cutter that a disgruntled rival jabbed her with some time before.

4

_It shan't be long now_, Count Milliardo Peacecraft would be seeing the big cheese soon.

Already, he was impressed.

"Look at that Super Modified XB-70, just _look _at it! I-it's floating on water! A-and the color, makes it look like a raven," he fumbled madly at ev'ry one 'round 'im.

Relena didn't seem impressed.

"So, there are a lot of float-planes out there," she bit out, annoyed.

Milliardo paid no more attention to her, but he continued to watch "her," that is, the mach-3 transport.

Just over Relena's head, two figures stepped out of the black beauty.

One, a large man of about forty, and the other, a small erect lizard in a trench coat and fedora.

"G'day, I'm from Oklahoma, and my name is Quatre Winner. I am pleased to see that you have arrived in good health- and high spirits, I hope," he greeted in an authoritarian tone.

_Hmm, black and yellow golf shirt, black slacks, and brown fly-fishing vest (open). I understand that his school colors were black and gold, and it appears that he's a fly-fisher; not what I expected from the owner of an international business like his._

_It appears he was at least subtly influenced by his surroundings when growing up. Pity. Not the best environment for culturing a captain of industry. Milliardo mused, with that little data to go on._

_Is that an iguana?_

Whatever it was, it scared Relena all the way to the back of the group, giving Milliardo the chance to meet Quatre Winner face-to-face.

"It's an honor to meet you like this, Sir," he said, struggling to control his excitement as he shook the Robber Baron's hand.

"Sir, Peacecraft, is that the right title? This is Auda De Laboratory, a Troodon, not a mutant of any kind, but a highly skilled dinosaur in my employment.

Gesturing with his hand, he directed the Count's attention to an obviously intelligent yellow-orange beast.

"How dja do," the lizard-man greeted in a nasal-human voice, as he offered If his hand.

Milliardo used a similar greeting, then stepped to the side of the _Espada_.

Relena finally fell into her proper role. Using an adaptable and Simi perpetual smile, she grasped the American's hand and shook it lightly.

"Hello, Mister Winner, Milliardo and I thank you for the excellent extraction."

_Indeed. I've got to learn how he hijacked the Espada! Even though it won't do me any good now,_ the Count was his as the Baron waved them into the shuttle.

"C'mon, I gotta go somewhere," he called.

5

"Welcome aboard, Mr. Milliardo, Miss Relena, if you've ever ridden Concord, well, you'll still be impressed," Captain Lucrezia Noin gloated, using her Italian accent as always.

"This baby can cruise at mach-3 at 80,000 feet, or fly supersonic at low altitude, should we chose to waste fuel," she added.

The Peacecraft duo nodded as they strapped themselves into some plush royal gray, or whatever colored seats.

"If you need anything, don't bother me, your Captain Noin, just call the flight attendant, or steward named Pagan. He'll help you to the limit of his abilities, all right?"

The captain left the guests in order to operate the craft, leaving them to themselves- and talk behind her back!

"She looked a bit young to be a captain," Relena whispered silently to If, a little doubtful of Captain Noin's credentials.

"I'll check the records," the pale count assured, pulling the hidden laptop from his "black" navy -blue raincoat.

He bragged about having a backdoor built into the Scotland Yard terminals- not a bad feat, methinks.

"This 'ill only take a-"

A window appeared in the middle of the screen, saying:

YOUR MODEM DOESN'T SEEM TO BE OPERATIONAL. PERHAPS YOU SHOULD CHECK FOR AN UNSTABLE CONNECTION. OK.

"Wha-?"

Quatre Winner appeared, standing in the aisle, beside the freelance hacker.

"Mind not using that?"

Milliardo didn't comprehend just what the old guy was talking about.

"What do you mean?" The athletically shaped fourteen-year-old pointed at the laptop computer as an answer.

"Well, if it's only a webplinace, don't use it at all, but in any case, I don't want any wireless transmissions coming from this craft, understood?"

_Affirmative. We're to stealthily escape the Vampire Clan's extensive search. I know what you're saying._

The crew seemed to have chosen that minute to begin takeoff.

Outside the window, these three passengers watched sand and small pebbles blow along the riverbank.

The engines were kind of silent, but fairly noticeable, so the Oklahoman sat down on the opposite side of the aisle from the Peacecrafts, - could have been a rough takeoff, from a river don't you know?

The Chief of W.E. pulled a palm-top out of his fishing vest, and pressed an icon that looked like a ringing bell.

"Hey, ah... Heero, I'd like an interface field and a holographic display beamed into the guest cabin, workstation for my eyes only." A thought occurred. "And Heero, have Gouch bring in some drinks."

(Gouch is a small robot.)

Heero.

That name clicked a memory out of Milliardo's mind.

He reached into a pocket of his hooded raincoat lying on the chair in front of him, and pulled out that film he had placed in there.

Lift-off.

Milliardo had a question for Quatre, but as he looked his way, he had another question first.

"You using a transparent hologram?"

Looking up, Quatre delivered an answer.

"Uh, yeah, actually, I've got two magic waves, one giving me an image in the visible light spectrum, except it's not visible to anyone but me, get it?"

Seeing that the count had a vague idea of what W.E. owner Winner was talking about, Mr. Quatre told Mr. Peacecraft about the laboratory-produced touch-sensitive field, called the interface field.

The Peacecrafts seemed highly interested.

Mr. Quatre moved his hand in a strange delirious sign language for a few moments, then he moved his hand in a theatrical gesture, complete with breathtaking golden fairy dust pixels trailing his hand as a comet's tail follows the nucleus.

In the comet tail's wake, a bodysuit-clad image appeared... it was Quare Winner!

This earlier self was smiling, and surrounded by a light orange aura.

His surfing suit (or whatever it was) had an imitation of the Winner coat-of-arms on the face of it; Super dark green base, red diamond trimming, and the royal purple courtyard inside the diamond.

Crowns sat among the purple in imitation of King Arthur's coat-of-arms.

The image of a twelve-year-old Quatre Winner finally spoke.

"How do, I am Quatre Winner, founder of Winner Enterprises and co-discoverer of Luminos, a transparent hologram residing within the Van Allen Belt.

Sadly, valuable data has been lost due to time, cosmic rays, and the very magnetic belt that bounced his neural network around. Of course, without the belt, his brain would have disintegrated."

The twelve year old or older child downed some water, then continued.

"Despite deterioration, Luminos proved to be useful in improving our knowledge of the Minoan Civilization, and was useful in developing magical wonders like the transparent hologram that complements the interface field, the discovery of aura photography and concealment of, and data of life beneath the ocean floor."

The hologram went on to speak of geothermal power, novel electronic devices, hanging vineyards, ballooned cavities for transplanted muscle fiber, brief tales of Minoan literature, and details of architecture.

"...Volcanoes powering steam through puppets, who would be manipulated into...Electronic impulses, either a dot or a dash, the votes could be counted, and the results would reach...and so grapes could be produced...with this power soldiers could...as one walked on the treadmill, scrolls of athletic heroes would speak of...the massive volcano-glass tower was also the center pillar and chapel for..."

The stories of this dead civilization were accompanied by awesome images of related topics.

Time passed, and the Peacecrafts were so preoccupied by the holographic epics and all that Milliardo never thought of decrypting Quatre Winner's phantom typing.

The young man smiled cunningly.

"Gotta OK these documents, analyse those reports, make sure the company operates honestly, and above all else, keep it confidential and on time." :-)

6 :-)

Elliot Tudor had never imagined that he would receive a blessing by watching the horizon on the day of the solstice.

But, not unlike the paleontologist studying fossilized dung for profound knowledge, practicing ones observation skills can provide astounding bits of information.

By stabilizing the image, Elliot Tudor clearly identified the fast black plane as an XB-70 Bomber.

"_My Corona_."

"Master Treize, Inspector Auct has received word that My Corona has just flown over our terrorist camp in Libya. He asks you what Quatre Winner would be doing in the Mediterranean on his birthday," a young messenger relayed.

Could this mortal, Quatre Winner even know about the vampire cults?

Is Milliardo such a maniac, the type willing to stop at nothing in order to exterminate all of the Transylvanian order?"

Treize was keenly aware of the perceived dangers of Winner Enterprises.

_That company would think of slaughtering all of us as nothing, that is how ruthless they really are, and that boy has betrayed us to them!_

The misinformation campaign that had begun far in advance was brewing desperate thoughts in the mind of the Vampire Regent King Treize, leading to an intensely violent action.

People act not on reality, but on their perception of reality.

Those "cavalry" interceptors saw a bomber built in the 1960s, not stopping to think that the Boeing 747s , products of the sixties, were chosen to be the United States President's most common shuttle twenty years later, and was trusted to handle threats to the Chief twenty years later, and something comparable to the superpower's leader is good enough for industry's leader as well. The airframe doesn't matter so much in modern aeronautics, remember that.

Rashid, the yowie from Australia, and pilot of _My Corona_, was confident that this heavily modified XB-70 Valkyrie was better than Air Force One, and Israeli co-pilot Afmad Hill and Italian Captain Lucrezia Noin doubtlessly agreed.

Nothing can escape determined blood-suckers forever, and the appearance of Fangs brought such thoughts to mind for Quatre Winner, who was interrupted from his work rudely by all warning systems known to anything.

Auda popped to life exclusively on Quatre's monitor.

"Sir, hostile Blood Pact Fang Interceptors approaching from stern positions, red alert recommended."

The boss approved.

"Prep the cat'. Miss Noin and Lady Une have command aboard _Corona."_

The orange man looked troubled,

"Sir, please don't use the parasite, those-" the idea clicked in the dino's mind; the nimble craft could avoid the bomber intercepting Fangs after flying in the middle of the parallel formation and Voila!

"As ordered. Sir!"

The one-of-a-kind fighter summoned the free-lance fighter jock into actions that bordered on the heroic.

"Within fang targeting range in twelve," the tanned and chiseled retired IDF pilot reported and re-reported time to engagement while Winner suited up in the cabin.

"Une, give me something [to work with,]" Captain Noin demanded over the PA.

"Um, the fighter is being deployed," the German Cyborg fumbled.

"Oh, then tell Auda good luck for me," Miss Noin replied.

Une looked troubled.

"Very well Captain, out."

The Italian Captain spotted an orange lizard behind the German a moment before the screen went blank.

"Une!!" The Italian woman yelled, "Exactly who is flying the Aries?"

But the intercom was shut down, as was the close circuit TV.

She slammed a food tray near her hip, then thumbed her radio to contact the patella-less hacker named Heero, a kid with his own workstation aboard _Corona_.

"Heero, drop what you're doing and assist the boss. He's in the parasitic Aries.

"Roger," Heero clipped.

And so, Heero leapt into the duty of keeping the boss alive.

The cargo bay had just slid open, and all systems were going.

"Une. Did you see all the surfaces move correctly?"

Combat Pilot Quatre Winner heard an affirmative, and thus Pilot and Une powered up the cat' and the jets, and launched the parasite fighter.

Braced and ready, the fourteen-year-old everything licensed kid tolerated crushing pressure as blue and white leapt at him.

Rush!

He armed the slug canisters and placed the nimble craft into a fierce belly roll.

High density tungsten carbide slugs fired in the direction of the Fang type Aries every time the cheap CCD'S spotted one, and so some vampire pilots were caught napping.

Countless Fangs were holed in the opening volley, but this young man was far from finished; some chose to continue the battle.

Without processing sensor data, Quatre Winner kicked his plane into an immalman (half-loop and roll) and turned on his Guiding Light radar package.

From passive to active.

The youthful pilot, fangs-out after the lead plane, paying the bewildered trailing victims little mind.

"I'll take you down."

Boss Winner followed the jinking wedge, anticipating the involuntary rhythm. The fretful pilot was running- not a pattern, but a situational mentality that controls someone's state of mind; a primal-like takeover that runs one's tempo and depth in maneuvering.

The Robber Baron didn't have a titanic task of putting this bandit in no escape range before assistance could save his butt.

The Fang pilot made a violent effort to shake the missile, or turn the tables on Winner in a dime sized turn, but the smokeless missile nailed him with no further incident from that direction.

Medium range radar-guided missiles were closing from way out, and the alert system wouldn't let the American businessman alone.

Winner pressed the fighter stick forward, sending the craft into a non-afterburning mach-one dive.

White towering clouds were approaching; just the way the Robber liked it.

He switched off the guiding light and adopted the CCDs for radar detection.

"Watch, if at all possible for...THE PALE BLACK NINNNJAA, AIRBORNE!"

The Baron hit the clouds, dropped the towed decoy, and the two chaff canisters. At just the right time, he pulled the nimble jet into a climb, then a vertical hover, disappearing from Doppler radar.

Forced to pull his hands off the controls for a moment, he deployed the endothermic cocoon, a layer of skin used for masking heat, and fed liquid hydrogen, the cool-juice stored in a small drop-tank, into the engines.

The missiles streaked by the canopy, and toward the only target left; the towed decoy.

"I've faked my death...again!"

Quatre checked the HUD for the target Fangs; North Korean/Transylvanian interceptors.

Seven nonhuman pilots died using active perception.

They didn't know only a phantom menace was destroyed, and the owner of the shadow used their radars as beacons

"_Corona_, this is RIB, seven Fangs have just been canceled."

Before the cat' could launch the flea, Heero had brought up air defense monitors, and, more importantly, pressed his one-touch Space Force access button- a massive pad that internet board was.

The Red Baron collected cups and perhaps other Memorabilia... Digital Diablo collects rapid dial buttons of his fallen foes.

Heero found it easier to upload than to type in commands when in a jam like this.

Somehow being forced into a premeditated strike didn't diminish the fun of wrestling the controls of a particle-beam firing satellite.

Heero decided that shooting a floundering Fang would be best, since he was positive he could blast such a lame loser before Colorado overrode his controls.

The wrath of Thor followed his choice. An illuminated God-rod splashed the strato-bird beyond the realm of matter, convincing all disabled Fangs to flee.

"Aye aye eye, my poor heart," Heero exclaimed, "Zeus really kicks!"

"Soy Capitan! Soy Capitan! Soy..."

Captain Stone slammed her mike as she always does when caught between a jam and incompetence.

" Grunt who would (ever) buy that caca about an audio screen-saver?"

Rashid and "The Golani Guy," (Afmad) focused on their jobs, careful not to provoke her.

Stone picked up the microphone and called Auda.

"Listen up, dear Auda, I need Heero's workstation on screen, _Ayer_," She demanded. No _Pronto_, no chance for praise.

It zipped on.

"Wooey, that boy's got uh Trojan horse invading security in order to withdraw from Space Force. Oh, and what's he pulling over here? Mimicking a Navy sentry and calling up some French Air?"

How overworked he is, but he's still so incredible!

Meanwhile, Rashid stepped up his evasive.

The Captain was forced to put her head back in the cockpit.

First Hand account by Quatre Winner

"Rib one, I'm now Rib two. See any Dassault Mirage Aries suits at your six? They're with me, over," the Robber Baron heard his radio crackle.

The Iberian's voice was gruff and masculine, hiding any accent.

This guy could be from anywhere, but Heero has a message on screen saying they're authentic.

"Rib two, I've got two Fangs on my six, could you brush them off for me?"

So he says to me...

"Roger. Intercepting. Flip on your box."

I turned on my IFF, (an identification transponder) in active mode, and continue the dive mentioned earlier, but with afterburner now.

Jinking would have slowed me down, only giving the Fangs' medium-range guided death-tubes a chance to reach me.

I was hoping my new wing would get 'em before my tanks went dry. (I had the emergency auxiliary engine running too; this "flea" would never fly again.)

I was calm, even though a vampire could try to plug me from that range and have a thirty-to-fifty percent chance of success.

(_Corona_ was feeding me data.)

Seconds passed.

A blue, (Rib two?) fired a long-range missile.

This air missile hammered the second trailing Fang into mulch, leaving the big fish ahead alone among enemies.

I knew he looked back instinctively, so I showed him my last-ditch move a little early.

I forced forward my throttle, kicked out my break, and slanted all my control surfaces for a climb.

Having done that, I fired my two infrared missiles toward the bewildered Fang once the target was acquired.

Stupid move; I didn't even have a lock on the guy, but they found him, thanks to Heero slaving them to Corona's guiding light.

"You rule!"

I told the French (I guess) pilot "thanks and so long."

I had somewhere I needed to be!

7

"Welcome back, Boss," Une greeted the returned parasite pilot.

"Likewise. I, ah, think that's proper, right?"

He seemed to be humoring the cyborg-German at his own expense.

What a guy.

The servant named Pagan handed the _Romantik _a phone linked to Heero and Auda.

"Hey, got the Roger Wilco of the Fangs?"

"Yes, they're getting directional assistance from a shuttle. That's the big dope at the moment, please stand by."

Quatre spent a moment thinking about a possible sixties song parody about a crime lab in the sky.

"It shan't be done."

"What?" Pagan asked.

"Nothing, just letting my mind drift into insanity. It shan't happen again."

Just then, Count Peacecraft and Relena stepped in.

"Boss job out there. Those hombres are nothing to sneeze at," Milliardo congratulated.

_Very American of him. Maybe we can relocate him after all._

"Thanks again. We're in your debt," Relena inputted.

Quatre brushed that aside politely.

"It was nothing- this plane and crew can sweep away a shabby taskforce no problem."

Winner used his own intercom.

"Rashid, Afmad, Noin, lend me your ears," he said theatrically.

"Yes Me Lord," the captain answered in a British sailor imitation. Quatre loved the manners of Star Wars imperial officers, a quasi-fetish he shared with Noin.

"Which are we in better shape for, landing the lake, or D-FW?"

"We could land in either the Trinity or Red River if you want to," she said confidently.

"I'll take the lake, thank you," the young old man chose.

"What lake would-"

Quatre cut her off with a weird zip-grunt.

"You know what lake I mean. That'll be all," he said, with much restraint in his voice.

Milliardo Peacecraft hoped he'd be allowed more time to mingle among Winner Enterprises personnel; he really felt at home with this mini bunch.

Treize was peeved.

Out of the Aries hanger and into the cabin...or holographic rainbow. Mr. Quatre Winner walked down the aisle as if he owned the place. Even if it was the guts of a rainbow.

He picked his phone out of his belt, pushed Lucrezia Noin's button, (The button on the phone that dials her number) and moved his chin around, or that's what a deaf person would perceive

"Noin, is that shuttle tailing us?"

She paused a moment to- Quatre doesn't know what- then reported, "The Mirage Aries are escorting it into Europe, Sir, things are looking up on all fronts."

Quatre ended the transmission and relaxed. He called Heero's workstation.

Heero's face appeared among other holo-projections.

"Heero, have the Mirages defeated the Fangs?" The boss already knew the answer.

"Affirmative. Thirteen to zero after we left," he said, subdued.

'_He's probably covering his tracks, or probing the Colorado defenses. Space Force just might nab him one day.'_

Winner parted from Heero, and moved back to his chair.

"I think I'll give the patella-less Diablo a real crisis sometime," thought the Robber Baron out loud.

He set to work scheming a plot against his own defenses.

Between 8:00 & 8:30, Space Force HQ, Colorado Springs, CO.

It pained the Space Force Chief to give in to a Oz Inspector, but he promised his involvement would be off the record, and if you can't trust Inspector Maxwell, who can you trust?"

"Nice to be a part of this investigation, Chief Septum," the disturbingly honest looking young South Africa native greeted.

"Well, nice to have you take a part in today's duties, Duo," the aged Chief grumbled.

Duo pivoted to the rows of personal computers and called for his assistant/partner, Chang WuFei.

"Let's toy with his head," he whispered, sotto voce.

"The suspect had uploaded a Trojan horse into the counter-hacking terminals, but he had no intension of crashing the systems. Instead, he only loaded the fiber-optics to the max," the virtual dark-colored variant of the white Mr. Maxwell reported, walking toward his partner.

"So this guy had no intention of doing harm to your State, Mr. Septum," the Oz detective translated.

Once that had sunk in, WuFei continued.

"The intruder only wished to use your space defense satellite against an immediate threat to his or her well being."

The Chief nodded, so WuFei went on to his point.

"This means that the intruder knows your system, and could enter rapidly at any time, thus, he has hacked here before, but this is so obvious it should go without saying."

Duo rebooted a PC, and the previously nullified interface tools were once again online.

"That's not quite a T-horse, but it doesn't self replicate, like a virus," he told the two guys behind him.

"But it was a T-horse, it was just uploading a takeover that could be countered simply by shutting off the PCs," WuFei chimed in.

"Giving the hacker time to use the mainframe no matter what we did," the Chief finished.

"Correct."

The Australian Bigfoot encountered no further trouble on the way to Oklahoma. Relena watched her movie, and Miiliardo played an interactive detective movie.

Quatre could develop a solid plan to fight the real-life Heero with, but he wasn't grumpy.

"Maybe I should get Une and Auda into this," he considered to himself.

"What are they doing right now?"

"Ha! You didn't expect those landing craft to have howitzers, did you?" Une was taunting Auda after a high-risk move that was paying off at the moment. She was prepared to sacrifice the cannon if she had too, and she new that Auda would make her lose them somehow.

"Take better care of your forces, Une," the voice of the boss said.

Une turned around to see Quatre Winner walking toward her.

The boss pointed at the board.

"Auda's recon cavalry is armed and ready to sweep down into your shore batteries."

That's exactly what the cyborg-dinosaur did. He was even successful in capturing the guns before the artillerists could scuttle them.

Quatre coughed.

"You guys want to help me on a project later?"

They both moaned, "Yeah," clearly disinterested.

Auda turned the cannons toward Une's ships, just as expected, but he added some mule carried rockets to the battery fire as well.

_Nice little game they conjured up._

Finally, at around nine 0'clock, _My Corona_ prepared to land on the lake.

The sun was still not all that high.

Hairy Rashid had found a nice deep spot and touched down.

Before touchdown, the shutters were opened on the _Corona_, so the passengers could look out.

"So what lake do you think this is?" Milliardo asked Relena where they were, even though she couldn't have a clue.

"Oh, well, I really don't know," she fumbled, "but I'd guess we're in Oklahoma anyway."

"I've got a better idea, and another better idea," he said cryptically.

He un-strapped, and walked over to the exit door.

"What do you mean, Brother?"

He told her what he meant.

"And my second idea is that we will get out once we reach that marina," he gestured toward (what else?) the marina.

"Now I see what you mean."

8

It turned out that the Count was right once again; but there was an unexpected twist.

He was sure the Lincoln before him was going to pick him up, but it happened that the group was to walk to an open field- where a jump jet waited.

"In love with jets, Mr. Peacecraft?'

The fourteen-year-old youth turned around while walking.

"Hey, they're the only way to travel!"

A stupid, semi antagonizing answer for a foolish, challenging question.

They're hardly blasting warning shots, but Relena was a bit troubled by the sudden hostile air of Count Peacecraft.

_Don't insult the man's choice of transport. Do you remember what he saved us from?_

Afmad and Noin both frowned for some time- until they reached the jump jet, that is.

It was somewhat like riding a raft, but the vertical takeoff craft reached the destination very quickly.

That was the whole point, really.

The Peacecrafts didn't see much of the Winner Enterprises compound, sense they buzzed by everything. The house and lawn, however, where they landed, didn't escape them.

Stampeding tag football players were also visible from the cabin.

One team, the one currently on defense, was full of big boys, ages varying from gifted twelve-year-olds, to around twenty five-year-old men.

The other team was full of middle-aged bell shaped dudes wearing Hara-kiri (quite literally belly splitting) jeans.

The fatallion placed the ball around their own 40 as the jump-jet shutdown.

Someone stopped the clock at sometime between the landing, and lowering of the ramp.

Both teams, with keen interest, watched the crew exit.

First out were Afmad and Une, then came Auda, Noin and Rashid.

Next down were Pagan, Milliardo and Relena. Finally, Quatre stepped down the ramp. (Heero was still on Corona.)

Everyone was a shield for him, thought the Count of Winner bitterly.

While If's head was frying, Une was ordering a grounds crewman to taxi the jet, and the crewman's fear of the towering yowie, Rashid, motivated him into complying.

Everyone was surprised to see Quatre Winner, who secretly picked up Une and the Peacecrafts while keeping up the front of rabbit hunting with very important clients in far off Australia.

They would be surprised to learn that Monroe Morgan and Stan Gandhi are imaginary people.

"C'mon, Quatre, the juniors are killing us," one old boy called, so Quatre broke off from the rest of the group.

"Watch him run circles around kids twice his age," Auda shouted to the group admiringly, "The boss will make it a game again!"

Afmad concurred

"He can run some routes that'll frighten the secondary!"

The Romanian defectors would see that the fourteen-year-old did run routes that brought the old guys back into the game.

They also saw that the modern brick home wasn't the only habitable structure on the lawn; a concrete home also existed in a hidden corner of the woods.

Eighteen-year-old Count Milliardo Peacecraft was told that he was actually standing above a massive complex as he was already on the cement patio.

"Yep, hee! hee! They dug t' Chiner an' filled it (the hole) wit' a techno-palace or something!"

I don't believe that. Just imagine the sinkhole that could form, he thought skeptically. There are subtropolises and bunkers, to be sure, but directly under this home?

Time passed as Milliardo learned more Quatresian myth.

It was obvious that so much of it was made up.

Would you believe he was a New York congressman's secret project, designed for counter-terrorism? Neither would Count Peacecraft, the vampire-defector who refused control of a vampire clan plotting to become a world power.

With that said, (in dreamland only) the Count went hiking.

Down hill from Milliardo, Une and the gang watch the boss with little interest and talk about Romanian Mafia military strength with much more gusto.

"When I contacted him at his Dacha last month, the count told me that the vamps were buying some Arab League Saladin Main Battle tanks produced above the official quota this year, and built more without license," Une said, even though she was watching and noting If's departure.

"You're not supposed to go on vacation until August though," Pagan informed the group, bewildered.

"That's right, but Peacecraft would be the new chief this month, so he moved his Black Sea vacation up to May, so he wouldn't slack off his duties within two months of gaining his new position," Une explained.

"You mentioned the Arab League, so how many connections could the vamps have?" Afmad asked the germen.

"Many, and they don't mind letting people know they exist. Did you know the Peacecraft's dacha was an exact replica of the Gorbechev vacation home?"

"That's going to grab attention," Rashid commented. Look who's talking.

"What type of reach does this group have?" Afmad speaking.

"I tracked an agent all the way to Christies Auction House. He bought Brezenov's Hearst for Milliardo," Auda answered.

"Morbid son ova gun," Ms. Noin swore.

Afmad cracked a smile at Noin, then asked,

"So how does this guy strike you, Une?"

Captain Une pondered this thoughtfully.

"Well, he's a nice guy, I'm sure, but he does have a dark side, like a good vampire." Everyone groaned in disappointment, and Une caught on.

"That's not all. If you must know more, he really doesn't strike me, as you call it, like a modern fellow. He's more like a man of the pre World War genre, President Wilson would really like him, and some of his social concepts seem pre Darwin. In fact, he might be a big Crimean War buff. Who knows?"

Everyone got the picture; the mention of Darwin meant that Milliardo was something of a European traditionalist in a social sense.

_So, if I want to kill him someday, I could attempt to beat him in a fencing duel_, thought the aggressive Italian woman.

Everyone had their own idea of what Une was saying about the kid, but they all believed there was something noble about his ideals: they'd already sensed it.

Lt. Colonel Thurman Dynamics has just called the Space Force; first human to get through.

Septum put the call on screen for the African detectives to see.

This guy has actually been a Brevet General on several occasions.

The screen changed from a phone tracing- map to a live transmission of an unnaturally angry looking soldier of above average size and sub-Saharan appearance.

The Detroit native inquired about the shutdown.

Chief Septum answered.

"We suffered an attack against out network, and all surface COM was cut."

He didn't mention that the mainframe was still running auxiliary functions, nor that a hacker fired a satellite based particle beam.

"As acting CINC of the US Electronics Warfare Corps, I'll be flying over via C-21 in two hours," Dynamics told those concerned.

_I guess he thought we didn't know where he's working these days_, thought WuFei and Maxwell, amused at the naivety of the idea.

"We'll be leaving now, saving you're crisis will be enough," Maxwell said with a pinch of salt.

As expected, Septum's face morphed into a mask of rage as WuFei said he'd stay. "To close up things here,"

Whatever that means.

After the American football game ended, the younger team departed to ride jeeps off-road in the mountains.

"Some time back, I played both ends of the ball, just like (I did) today," Quatre said, walking up the slope.

"Great job in the valley, too," Afmad and Noin called.

Quatre smiled at that, most likely, already thinking that.

Just like so many guys, the old team reviewed the game in conversation, explaining how they kept the other guy from running over oneself all day, exaggerating ones role in the victory, (they won!) and all stating the importance of Quatre Winner stepping in at clutch time.

"We should ask Heero to do an electronic search for more vampire activity," Quatre whispered to Rashid, passing by.

"Aye aye."

Odd, this Teletype message is unlike anything a human is likely to create. It has got knots and grooves across the entire message; and had Maxwell failed to trace it, he'd have been in the dark. However, the message was corrupted!

"Why does this guy have an enveloping shield around the beam?"

Inspector Maxwell manipulated a keypad while maintaining control of his United Nations issued Jeep Liberty.

"Can't get a complete fix on it, no further than Texarkana to the southeast," he croaked.

The Doppler direction finder failed to get a complete fix on the tight-beam transmission.

Duo saw a lightning streak flash across the finder.

"That's a bomb detonation transmitter!"

A ground based electronic counter measure from a nearby location locked onto the Liberty, fried it, and toasted it.

"Elliot Tudor's information has been accurate, and our Fang interceptors indeed engaged Corona over the Atlantic. However, the personal jet hailed the Iberian Authorities, who canceled our force," Treize updated the Vampire Confederation Delegates, who have come to Vienna to attend an emergency hearing called by Romanian Regent Treize.

"Do you wish to outlaw the Peacecrafts, Mister Treize?" The Austrian host wanted everyone to know the intention of those already concerned.

Treize answered, "Yes, but only these two traitors, the rest of the family is no threat to the safety of the Clan."

The elderly Austrian nodded respectfully, there was no hint of foul play in the regent's words, but Host Vampire Zack Hamlet was sure the outlaw order started the conspiracy wheels turning on many heads that afternoon, as the graybeard meditated on the issue during a recess early that evening.

Traitors don't tend to escape before doing anything, except in a totalitarian nation...even Aaron Burr shot Hamilton before that strange Midwest thing occurred.

"I think some of Treize's dirt escaped into the wind."

"Why have a number for every single media outlet? W.E. security has the answer."

-CUTTING EDGE SCOOPE, 3rd rate tabloid.

While eating cake, the pager registered to Someone beeped while hanging on to Quatre Winner.

After stumbling out of his chair, he successfully unclipped it, and read the message.

LOOK UP.

An airship drifted across the cloudless sky, with the message: "Yowie message intercepted. Don't worry, the spy has amnesia. Send Corona up the river."

Half to himself, and half understanding, Quatre said "Roger," flatly.

And so, Heero's radiant sign guided the Peacecrafts relocating taskforce to the end of they're kickoff in a hostile arena.

Epilogue

Quatre merrily indulged Milliardo by thrusting a death-rail at him.

"I plan on keeping you in America for awhile," he was saying, having fallen back from the Count's counter-strike, "I was thinking about letting you live in an Astronomy commune for a few weeks, before your interview."

Milliardo's eyebrows rose. I guess this guy doesn't need intelligence on my clan as awfully as I calculated at the outset.

Without even betraying his intention one bit, Quatre thrusts with an abbreviated outward slash that the Count found himself parrying. No!

The Baron reversed, slashing Peacecraft's left shoulder with a backhand movement.

"I understand that you're actually competitive in math and hacking, but I'm sure you have solid reason not to reveal **_THOSE_** skills too, right?"

If snorted, attacked like a modern athlete.

But Quatre owned him so much...

It's not even worth mentioning.

Satire can be one of our most beautiful and ugly genres. This is written in a ton of genres, in a mottled fashion, but many of you may errantly deem this a satirical defaming of the American President, but this is **not** an anti-Bush story. Quatre's casting as "an oilman" swam into my mind, (a) because the Gundam series leads one to assume Quatre's **Arabian** family earned their money in the energy industry, (b) I wanted to set a GW story in the Heartland, and all the pundit scuttlebutt about "Bush Country" practically wrote the plot for me, though, as I said earlier, nothing here is based on actual events. (c) I actually had most of this humorous plotline jotted down well before public opinion turned south for the president, who I have no malice toward, BTW.

I appreciated Swift's timeless satire, _Gulliver's Travels_, as a great work of art. Despite everything, it was good-natured, and a joy for Tory and Whig.


	2. Blood Trail

Does anyone remember the rumors that circulated around the Oklahoma City bombing? I've heard some crackpot things myself, including one theory that the United States government was secretly concentrating a "shadow government" into the very center of North America, because, naturally, (a) the coasts would really have it in a major nuclear war, or (b) the government knew the ice caps would soon melt, and wanted to be ready for the eventual flood.

Under this premise, Timothy McVeigh somehow knew all the details about this, and decided to show the government that he knew.

What's the point in that? I have know clue, but I'll go with it here, and create skinhead hangouts and other things that I've never seen around Oklahoma City, and nobody has, I bet.

I had a lot of fun weaving conspiracy theories into this chapter, but I guess it's always healthy to spin out "creative" viewpoints.

I notice we have a reviewer, and a positive one, at that. Maybe I can prove I deserve being here this time.

The copyright notice from chapter one applies in this one. Too. Um, if some characters offend anyone based on race, gender, or weight, yes, I said weight, please understand the viewpoints mentioned in the story aren't Viscount Ganymede's or mine. If you're a redneck, bother Jeff Foxworthy before coming after me. Just kidding. Does that cover everyone? What about hillbillies? Isn't Oklahoma too flat to even have hillbillies?

1.

Duo Maxwell, blackened, not burned, Crispy, yet rare, found himself in a meadow.

Oklahoma cattle seemed to be eating grass happily while not even paying a feeble mind to the charred African detective lying among them.

"Have I fallen into the nexus?"

Living leather looked up and whaled a reply.

"I guess not, since I can't talk to the animals."

So, is this an Oklahoma plain?"

Maxwell stood up.

No one dumped him here; that would be stupid, so that meant he was looking for something.

"Now I remember, I was looking for that blasted jammer that fried the jeep's electronics," he stated triumphantly.

"By Jove's sake! How could I forget that?"

Duo rolled to his feet and recovered his bearings.

"Th' bloomin' thing has got t' be heah (here) somewheh," he thought out loud, peering into the distance.

"Just hope I don't get knocked off without Chang here; they'd give th' po' fellow a 140 hour wo'k week."

Maxwell shook his head sadly, 'cause few good inspectors exist these days, save ambitious attorneys and political minded reporters.

Amazing how informants are lacking numbers at the trade conventions, too, but things will change once Duo Maxwell moves on to teaching in another decade or so.

The chaparral-like conditions have crept into this field a tad before the other ranches started suffering this fate, in the year 2023.

_More cows, I guess._

After being blown to the farm, walking was a pleasant diversion for the God of Death, Protector of the World.

"Calling in WuFei might insure my safety, but I'm positive someone will come pick up the ECM soon," he assured himself. Certainly he was right, for the suspects are notoriously thorough in every action they ever take.

"And then I'll finally prove it to myself."

With that said, he marched along the meadow, testing his durable camera, to see if he could get some evidence for everyone else.

2

Time passed.

The two renegade vampires, Count Milliardo Peacecraft and Noble Relena Peacecraft, have moved to Louisiana for a vacation-stay at an astronomy-astrophotography commune.

Winner Enterprises did their business, and Zechs did his. Maxwell was on the verge of finding incriminating evidence, and Zack Hamlet was not.

Thurman Dynamics (Lt. Colonel at the moment, the Army doesn't have room for another General) and WuFei Chang learned all they could about the hacker, not much more than what they learned the first hour.

Septum went on leave to Calgary.

Cybernetic dinosaur Auda rotated Une out of the Peacecraft case, and lived in close proximity with the kids for the duration of their vacation.

The crew of _My Corona_ was working as usual, trying not to think about _their _vacation-time in August.

Une sneaked the _Espada _out of the Mediterranean, once the Vampire's search faded into nothing.

With every new cycle, teeth were progressively protruding from the turning gears.

3

Inspector Norman Auct was progressively pushing his teeth into the jawbreaker plateau.

This international private investigator had a clear advantage over all the other interested groups; he worked for everyone.

His current assignment has brought him to Beirut, where Trowa and Catherine were waiting to contact him.

Trowa and Catherine.

Two nocturnal vampire shock troopers of the Ringmaster Clan.

Auct had once heard that these two could motion heavy broadswords like foils and drive railroad spikes in the ground no problem.

The heavy Frenchman wondered how much of a burden he might have been if placed in one of their bags.

"How big will they be? How much energy can you store in a compact body, anyway?"

Auct couldn't help but think idly about the entire situation, you see, this international espionage gig has gained a real boost since _Corporate Conquest _made its debut in the summer of 2020, and there was much glamour in the enterprise, but even Auct, the most successful upstart, has just been finding it dull recently.

_After this job, I should get back into homicide detecting. Yeah, maybe that will be fun, just like before this crazy venture._

_Honestly, who wants to work for these creepy jerks, anyway?_

Auct gulped.

_The creepy jerks, I believe I see them._

Two forever sun-shielded night-monsters stepped past the hydrogen bus-stop on the corner before the gaze of Norm. The detective, gripped, forgot where he was- something he had repetitively promised himself he would "never do again!"

"Worst beasts possible in human form," he mumbled under his short breath, working hard to jog his memory, so he could get a fix on his own position.

_Yogurt Yurt, on Tigress Street, opposite Lazlo's Comic Shop_.

The vampires were his number one concern, and Auct needed to focus.

"All right, the nightmares are crossing the street, like mortals. Maybe these aren't the guys."

They had to be; though Auct expected lumberjacks, these two were dreadfully menacing in their own way.

One was trailing behind the other, eager to visit the comic-book shop. This one was a young man, 170 centimetres in height, yet very slender, still not in his physical prime.

Norman had no way of knowing this, for the one named Trowa wore a loose-fitting orange suit similar to one a rap-artist might have worn three decades ago.

The leading vampire, Cathy, was a woman slightly smaller and older than Trowa.

She was wearing a vibrant Hungarian dress that was even louder than her counterpart's suit.

Somehow, they found a way to stand out in the Beirut of the post-war era.

"They look like circus performers at a costume party," Auct mused, pondering their fashion.

Following this statement, he looked down and stirred his dairy-cauldron, before Catherine could make eye contact.

The detective heard the door-chime jingle, and assumed the vampires had entered.

Still, he waited, his sweet-slough begging to be inhaled.

The marriage of footfall and heartbeat thrilled him negatively, but still, he held his ground; or rather, his vinyl chair.

"Auct, there's no _external use only_ warning for frozen-yogurt," the Nascent arrival teased, baring her void-white fangs in an incidentally heinous smile.

Auct looked up and blushed, surviving his shame.

Ultra-placid Trowa pulled a red and beige bib off a chair.

"I suggest you clean off your fine Italian tweed trench coat with this," he said, extending it (not the coat) toward Norman, who received the gift.

"Thanks, but this old thing was made in Bangladesh."

Trowa's stiff expression softened, but impatience boiled out of Cat.

"Could we just get on with this? King Treize Kushrenada demands your attendance at his ad hoc court right away," she urged, standing firm. Not difficult while standing over _Humpty Dumpty. _

"Of course, of course," the inspector nodded.

_Funny how nobody wants to be involved_, a much cleaner Duo Maxwell found himself thinking, following his waste of time interviewing the local population at _Waldorf's Cafe_.

"I think it's time to call WuFei, and tell him I need the forensics lab."

Motion picture phased into a static blizzard in a brief struggle within Zack Hamlet's home entertainment cube.

Jupiter's prodigy child, the budding MASTER OF Quatre AND TIME; the Viscount of Vitamins, modern Ganymede Helen Hero, Iria Winner, beat back the electro-froth to secure her audience with the Austrian Elder.

"Nice to see that you have something to report today, Viscount. Have you found him?" Hamlet the Greybeard was dying to know the whereabouts of France's antihero, Norman Auct.

"Yes indeed, Headmaster Hamlet, one can always count on Detective Auct to visit the _Yogurt_ _Yurt _wherever it can be found," the mad mercenary lectured.

"He must always have a chalice of chill."

Zack huffed a muffled snort.

"Hmm, good show, now tell me, who's pursuing him right now?"

Iria glowed, proud of her unit.

""Ford Taylor of Macadamia is stalking Auct and two Herculean beings presently."

Hamlet held his breath, gears catching tightly. _Could it be them?_

Iria gazed at the experienced Austrian, alarmed.

"Awestruck by my lucent likeness?"

Hamlet laughed despite his former state. _What a braggart_!

"Hiee!! Cuff! Cuff! Pow! Pow! Deep breath . No, sugar, I'm used to your likeness- I just think that I've stumbled into another area of investigation I've been up to," he answered.

The aged vampire rose from his kneeled position, gears moving fluidly.

"He-he-he-he-he! And I was so worried that Treize was advanced in his search. I should have known better. What could I have been thinking? Treize's independent search must be as stagnant as the Russian economy!"

Merc. Winner looked highly puzzled.

Ham picked up on this, and decided that he would trust the fortune-soldier to retrieve more information with more vigor.

"I can't explain right now, but I want you to do something for me that is related to my ranting," was the verbal explanation.

Hamlet pulled two photos out of an album, and scanned them through the feed to Iria.

"I must know if these are the two guys with Auct," he asked.

Iria peered at two large predator-eyed vampire-goliaths.

"I'll ask Ford," Winner droned, telephoning Taylor.

The answer came in shortly.

"Yes ma'am, those are the guys, I'm positive. You want an image?"

Iria affirmed.

The wait didn't take long, since Iria's wireless web was a fast network.

The pro soldier held his phone-screen before Hamlet.

. "Where could they be taking him?" Zack wondered.

"That's what we'll discover," Iria boasted.

Zack smiled; glad to hear that Iria Winner was still enthused about the business.

"Catch 'em for me, Lass, Heaven knows I've had little luck."

The saluting savior (of the hired kind) signed off.

4

"I not coming- just think about it, wouldja? People down here are just too trigger-happy when they see "Gator-man from the Bayou" among them, so I'm staying here, alright?"

Auda protested with the Peacecrafts for the megateenth time about why a dinosaur shouldn't go to the movie theatre.

"Fine, fine, but you know, we'll be without a bodyguard again. Only our anonymity is keeping us safe," Relena informed him, while edging out the oak door of the mobile-cabin.

"Yeah, you're like a masseuse without hands," Milliardo Peacecraft smiled.

"Or a mentor living in prison," Relena added, opening the door.

Exeunt; the Peacecrafts left the cabin. They left Auda behind, and, hopped into the Toyota with two friends (of Relena's, Milliardo was just the driver, but he will watch the movie).

Auda sighed.

"I guess I'll call the boss."

Evolved Beirut Opera House, right-centre balcony.

"Are you certain no one followed you here?"

_Odd greeting from Treize, _Norm found himself thinking.

"Hard to say in this mid-east neon city, but I would say _yes_ if the stakes were lower," the vampire, Trowa, spoke up.

"Well, there's no reason to fret over something so trivial, is there? No one could gain much from that knowledge, correct? Treize dismissed the worries, and added, "Why do we not enjoy tonight's show? There is much latino-jazz in this production!"

_He's always been a good host_, Auct thought, placing himself in a plush leather chair.

_And the places he hosts at! A nice balcony with mauve bunting along salmon suede walls, tan Russian leather chairs besieging small oak executive-modern tables, and neo-Victorian chrome reading lamps! _

Auct turned around...

_A miniature buffet and drink fountain!_

The curtain rises with a flourish, stirring Auct's attention out of the room.

_Raiders of the Creole Tomb _jazzed its appealing features of roaring twenties Louisiana life, delighting the affluent crowd at a slap-stick speed that kept them in the dark of what exactly was delighting them, unaware of the filthy moral tone in the entire production.

"Look carefully, Inspector, they have no idea how much this is corrupting their souls, their dearest mores, and all the values that make them human.

It's beautiful, I'll be stealing them of their wholesome selves, and replace all that purity with this counterfeit completeness; I'll put an end to all of this pragmatic split of freewill verses domination once and for all!" He slammed his fist for emphasis, drawing approval from Trowa and Catherine.

"And yet, this is not the masterpiece that will sweep away the two thousand year order that stands in my way," said he, sourly, as he made a sweeping gesture toward the lewd play.

"Still," he journeyed on, rubbing his chin, "this is a crafty skit. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha- Ha- Ha-Ha! He laughed maniacally until the next balcony "shushed" him, but still he was in a good dark humor.

"You see, Auct, without going into details, I seriously need you to capture those Peacecraft kids. You're participation is critical," he pleaded of the international detective.

"I'll do my utmost service, Sire," the Frenchman had no idea where _that _had come from; obviously he could manipulate anyone before they had a chance to resist.

"Uh, I need to excuse myself for a moment," he squeaked, desperately wishing for some space.

"Be quick about it," Treize permitted, wearing a voice of boredom.

"Trowa, show Mr. Auct to the restroom."

The brawny vampire saluted.

"Sir!" He exited with Auct in tow.

Treize washed them out of his mind, raising his opera glasses to his fore.

"Cathy, do not grow complacent in the coming times, even in the calmest moments, you'll be in a cliff-hanger on the world stage," he told the remaining other occupant of his luxury seating, keeping his eyes fixed on the show as well as it's hypnotic effect on the crowd.

"Splendid, all of these affluent oligarchs here to watch a ritzy program built for their sophisticated entertainment desires, having their minds retooled for the artificial divine will of one King Treize Kushrenada of the toppled Romanian triumvirate, currently holder of Transylvania, Wallachia, and Moldova, now grappling with the big fish, in waters once thought to be over his head!" He rotated his surfaced head toward the vampire-girl.

"And you will get to have all the fun, Miss Bloom, you will be the hand that moves the clandestine game pieces throughout this sphere of humanity. You make me so proud, my child; you have grown strong enough to play your demanding role in the scheme of centuries. For emphasis, I say once more I'm proud."

This horrific boldness startled Miss Cathy, but she held her start in check, flashing a darkened mega-watt smile at her Commander-and-Lord.

"I see you're at peace with your role, and I can't describe my joy at you finding yourself in a calling so close to home.

I've always been hoping you and Trowa would forever be happy beside me; now I know that everything is going to be alright," Treize issued his charismatic glow throughout his warm speech.

A possessive joyful feeling enveloped and throbbed across the girl, Cathy, upon hearing the Regent speak.

"I love you, Dearest Daddy, and you're right, I am happy serving you in whatever mission you find you must do. I'll never allow those Peacecrafts to hurt you, never," she cried, rushing forward to hug her dear beloved leader.

"I know dear, I do, and I wish the best for your brother and you in stopping that troublesome lot, _Hime_," he soothed, noting Norman's return, and shocked expression.

He laughed heartily at Auct's response to the preternatural Catherine being called "Princess."

Auct shifted and stammered through dozens of lines before hitting the "New Yorker" approach.

"So, a-hey, all this is really nice, but, a, I gotta demanding business, and, a, wanta get back to th' job, ya know?"

Once more, Treize barked his jolly laugh, humored by the tension he sensed in the detective.

"_Oui_ suppose you should, but tell me, do you have any lead to follow? "Nay?" Am I correct?"

The Frenchman looked inward for the longest moment, before answering.

"Yes, Your Majesty, I only require a flight across the Atlantic to extract the remaining holes in the case."

The Vampire King had expected this kind of bravado, but he outwardly swallowed Norman's misinformation.

"Alright, Detective. I'll charter two Taurus flights for Cairo tonight, where a military transport is waiting to carry you across. These two will fly along with you. I dare you to go right away, if you're so sure you won't disappoint me," Renada challenged, gesturing toward Cathy and Trowa as "these two."

Norm was taken aback; he didn't expect Treize to listen to him- he really needed to understand this guy!

"Gee, sure, right away," he saluted, moving to the back of the balcony.

"Trowa, Cathy, do keep Mr. Auct in line. Until later," the Regent waved off, swiveling to watch their exit.

"So long," they said, turning and waving in one motion.

At last, the bright duo could no longer be seen, and only Treize's pride was left for company-, which was fine, since no one was going to keep those two vampires from returning.

Treize had raised them himself, after all.

5

Halfway across the planet, the two Peacecrafts emigrants were also enjoying the theatre- _Joe Bob's Mighty Fine Cinema-Screen_, in fact.

That day's show was none other than the sci-fi thriller, _THE DAY THE EARTH FRIZ ON IT'S AXIS, _one of the better films of the 2023 summer.

As good as retired, the little dino, Auda, guarded the mobile-cabin, while Milliardo drove Relena to the theatre, as well as her two friends, Jewel and Athena.

The sun was overhead, as it always was in the northern hemisphere in the month of June, and had these two been purebred nocturnal vampires, as their ancestors, they wouldn't have survived the day.

The drive was as fair as the weather and the Peacecraft skin-tone, a major factor in the pleasant mood of the group as they seated themselves in the velvet chairs before the screen began to play.

(Projector lights screen, and violins play gothicly with a flourish.)

The entire pantheon of horror effects shocked the audience to life, with infernal ticking, and ghostly scenes of abstract terror.

At last, the sickly-green printing...

THE DAY THE EARTH FRIZ ON IT'S AXIS!

Every once in a while, Milliardo found something that stumped him up in English, and the word "FRIZ" racked his mind for several moments, before he decided the word originated in Kentucky.

Some slow, depressing instrumental music summoned in the early scenes of the film.

It all held no interest to Milliardo, who hunched his head under his shoulders, and quickly scribbled a possible poem on a small notepad.

It read...

My land is covered with flies, my firstborn dies.1

I'm Egyptian.2

Our tools are made of bone, 3

Our language written on stone, 4

I'm Egyptian.5

I live on the Nile 6

I kill a crocodile, 7

I'm Egyptian.8

We built the Sphinx, 9

Our bloody river stinks.10

We're Egyptian.11

We chased our slaves, 12

We drowned in waves.13

We _were _Egyptian.14

The Count felt the urge to write: "writ in stone."

_When in Rome_, he shrugged, considering all he could do with the work.

"Fifteen lines... hmm, perfect Rhyme, perfect length, easy to remember- could be my inspiration of the year," he pondered aloud, getting a "shush!" for the effort.

"I wonder if I can make a sequel?" He wondered. "How about another civilization?" He thought for an exhausting moment.

"Nothing rhymes with Anazazi," he said, not stopping to think that he hadn't used anything that rhymed with 'Egyptian ' either.

Insights like the first one refuse to come often.

Ford Taylor of Macadamia, a tall, slightly lean bronze man, diligently probed for routes that would keep him close to the hopefully unsuspecting prey.

"Viscount, Viscount, the bats are winging out of the cave. They're heading is sky-bound," he reported in real time to his hired-soldier boss.

His eyes bugged out at what he saw next.

"Ganymede, the bats have morphed Sampson style," he urgently called, seeing a pair of Taurus Cruisers.

"I copy, Alex, I see that they want out quickly. Stay safe, Bud, I must cut some ham, over," the boss replied, obviously asking Zack Hamlet for advise.

Ford was forced to accept this.

Iria was the victor of the static war once again.

"Zack, Alexan-er, Ford, yeah, Ford says they're leaving the city from the airport. I need the client to make the call," she called in.

Ham hummed a patriotic tune.

"Just create an emergency, will you, girl? Something to force Norman into the hospital. My guys can take it from there."

Iria said she could manage that.

"I have the formula you've been looking for!"

The Oklahoman revealed a small vial as she said this.

The Austrian's brows ruffled.

"Is that the trick?" He inquired.

Iria forced herself to change modes, getting back to the task.

"Sure is, I gotta contact Ford before the vampires leave," she excused, shutting off the phone.

"See ya, Zackery!"

She waved him away, turning Zack's box to darkness.

"Understood, Captain, applying the substance," said Taylor, applying the substance, as he said.

He dismounted from the last two-seat Taurus cruiser, putting his dripper away

Minutes later.

"Time to fly, Norm, and see what you can do," Iria Winner listened to the large female vampire, who was mounting the two-seater Taurus, as the large male Romanian soared into his single-seat fighter.

"Next stop, Cairo," Winner heard through her eavesdropping-beam phone, as the word resonated in at real-time speed.

"Looks like I'm on the path to victory, as expected," she laughed, succeeding once again in the _Corporate Conquest _era.

Airborne, hanging over 70,000 feet, the Taurus buffeted, as the canopy exploded outward. (By design, as it turns out.)

The pressured canopy took a wiz, if you will, leaving the Frenchman's lungs empty, until he reconnected his mask, which he fumbled into place.

His pilot worked to drop airspeed, and also to plunge they're elevation to twelve thousand feet.

He gasped vaderly, suffering severely from decompression.

"There spots in your vision?" He heard Cat ask blandly.

He affirmed (and refused to swear), describing the spots.

_I just want to be a homicide detective again!_

For once, a plan more sophisticated than shopping worked flawlessly!

Tactical example: The Taurus pair made an emergency landing on Cyprus, and Zack Hamlet's Bi-static radar eyed them, reported the exact moment of touchdown.

"Strike Team Saturn, time to harvest," Hamlet green-lighted the team, Austrian accent sounding intellectual for once.

Yep, things work when Iria Winner is involved.

A paramedic team carried the detective away, and the two vampires had silence at last.

Trowa rubbed some wet stuff across his fingers, eyeing the grease intently.

"Something is not right," he called for Cathy's attention.

As she moved near, he continued.

"I found this on the canopy. I'm sensing deceased microbes, and their corrosive enzymes," he concluded, turning toward his sister.

"We're in some sort of trap, and it doesn't look good."

The entire attitude of the medical team changed once the doors closed, and the ambulance transfigured into an interrogation room.

A barbiturate dosage placed the subject into a semi stupor, and answers were extracted before Auct could receive treatment.

Zack scored big, and the team scattered before the "vampire guardians" could react. Bingo.

Ganymede and company packed up and left for payment, never to trust a wired transaction.

"That was good, Ford. I'll let you carry the money this time, huh?" Iria slapped the Macedonian and boarded the ramp of her jumbo-transport.

"It's nice beating someone in our line of work like that. Auct had it coming, you know? Monopolizing while not looking for us. I really enjoyed myself this time."

As was common in the 2020s, Iria left Beirut happy.

6

At last, Duo Maxwell spotted movement on the ranch.

His old KGB monocular lacked the power he needed, however, and he was forced to spy through the bulkier 50mm _Sovietsky _field binoculars- impossible to conceal.

Sure, he could have used his much smaller digital camera, but he absolutely loathed the idea of using battery power for magnification.

However, he was aware of the risks in being caught spying on a rancher; cattle rustling is a serious no-no, and the state courts would be sure to let a rancher go free for shooting Maxwell, should the cowboys see him.

He continued zooming in.

A common forklift, a Korean model, lumbered toward a beige semi, transferring a large grill-plated box.

"This is worth a picture," he remarked, snapping an image with his _Fuji_.

"Now here's th' haud paut," said Duo, as the truck began moving.

"Stupid civil liberty unions have made it really hod to identify fom trucks."

He slandered America's lack of control over farmers, finding no I.D. signals on the truck.

"Zombie, looks like Chang had to trail this bugger."

They had to take a commuter flight from Cyprus to a more public airfield, but the two vampires and one Frenchman safely reached Cairo, and boarded their Aeroflot transport.

"The old crate" landed in Bermuda, where Detective Auct worked on arranging another flight.

"This really isn't 'across the Atlantic,' there is still water between me and North America. But hey, whatever," Auct shrugged, grateful to have made it to the old blockade-runner island.

"Ok, so where are we going next?" Cathy pressed, as she and Trowa flanked Norm in the terminal.

"Denver Colorado. I'm hoping we can catch a detective and pump him for information. I'm afraid the chances of this plan working are slim, however," he admitted matter-of-factly, sounding confident in tone, like a cyber-detective might.

"Fine then, maybe Trowa and I can find time for batting practice while we're a mile up."

Saturn had reaped a bundle of information, and once every datum reached Vienna, Zack Hamlet looked over the harvest.

"So Auct wants to meet Inspector Maxwell and/or Detective Chang in Colorado, does he? He says Oz Intel has an advanced search of their own? Why- excuse me, how did this outside partnership of Maxwell and Chang become so advanced in this vampire concern?"

The black-on-silver suited blond Carpathian male, Saturn Leader, explained.

"Auct said the Inspectors arrived and assisted the Alliance States Space Force H.Q, in Colorado, shortly after _My Corona_ Battled the Blood Pact Fang-Interceptors off the coast of Spain, Sir."

Hamlet appeared slightly flustered.

"Captain, is Lisbon the capital of Spain?"

The Carpathian blinked.

"No, Sir, it's the capital of Portugal."

Zack nodded.

"And where did you say _Corona _was?"

The Saturn Force leader stared at the floor.

"Spain, Sir, I'm sorry."

Zack straightened in his chair.

"As you should be. The Aries took off from Lisbon; the battle was on the west side of Iberia. Now, Captain, was this a subtle misinformation ploy, or a dereliction of duty?'

The Captain seemed unable to focus on his shoes.

"It was just an innocent slip, Sir. May I continue the report?"

"Sure."

"Okay, as we know, a particle-beam from space operated against Transylvanian forces out in the Atlantic; it appears Winner commandeered the beam from Space Force."

The Austrian acknowledged this as creditable, the captain suspected.

"Thank you, Captain, you are dismissed." As the Taskforce Leader slid the door closed, Hamlet rested a hand on the executive phone-pad.

"I could shadow Maxwell before Auct arrives, a shuttle from Los Angeles may beat a flight from Bermuda, but that slight advantage doesn't make up for leaving Auct alive. I must do better than that."

Zack pondered the geopolitical situation alone in his chambers, gears grinding for a masterstroke, calculating for a solution for a spare few minutes, before the pause counts as a hesitation.

"I agree to a point, but Une could possibly get soft, guarding the Peacecrafts for so long. On the other hand, she may begin considering this her project, and work at a higher efficiency than on any other job," said Quatre Winner, hearing of Auda's involuntary neglect in Louisiana.

I'm sorry, Sir, but I might actually do harm if I go into town with them," said Auda, softly.

"I understand, but I have a lack of talented people. Rashid, Kurama, or Afmad could possibly do the job well, but _My Corona_ still needs them," Winner speculated, just trying to help.

"Rashid would have the same problem, but Afmad may just be able to help."

On his end of the line, Quatre dropped his head back and smiled.

"What about Heston, he should be available, since he's been retired for some time."

Auda snorted.

"I'll make you a bet, he's still working twelve hours a day somewhere in the I.D.F. (Israeli Defense force)."

Quatre hummed an affirmative. You see, Heston Hill, Afmad's father, is a former Director of Intelligence at Mossad, and has a terribly strong work ethic.

"Although I'm a sucker for the underdog, even I'll turn this bet down."

Auda had nothing left to say.

"I'll send Une over. You'll stay to guard the mobile-cabin, unless you're bored," Winner resolved, and began winding down the conversation until hang-up.

Somewhere in Queens, New York, New York.

"Ganymede! Welcome again, and congratulations on yet another highly successful job! I hope it was fun," said SIP- Simon Ichabod Prescott- the banker mediating between Iria Winner and Zack Hamlet.

Iria Winner smiles fiendishly, just to mislead Simon Prescott a bit.

"Yeah, we took care of business."

"I see," said Sip, although he really didn't.

"Sure you do- so anyway, I'll need my emeralds," Iria casually demanded, holding her smile tightly.

"Of course, you're light weight hard currency."

Iria and her crew visually followed spring colored butterflies arc around the neo-classical dome of the Solomon's palace replica- or an architect's conception of it.

At last, Solomon's wives, or a modeling agency's conception of his wives, brought in early Californian satchels containing the payment.

"Thanks, Sip, although you steal more than taxes and import duties, you do make my job possible," said the Viscount, paying Simon the ultimate complement.

"Thank you, Ma'am, you're a real constant, you know, and you dress well, too," Sip replied, scanning Iria's rodeo-rider "getup."

"Cool, take care," Iria waved, turning after collecting her payment, leaving the banker and Turkish belly dancers behind.

"See you around, Ms. Winner," Sip yelled, edging in the last word- he couldn't resist!

"Well, he's not at Boulder," said the pudgy Auct, watching another hardball rise to the upper deck.

"Who?" Trowa asked, turning from batting practice.

"Duo Maxwell. I thought he'd be at Space Force, but it seems he left."

Trowa blinked.

"I thought the Space Force H.Q. was in Colorado Springs."

"It is," Auct explained, "but much office space exists in Boulder. You see, a national park kept the H.Q. from expanding, so an office building was erected a few years back (in Boulder)."

"Oh."

The loud-mouthed pitcher pulled Trowa's attention away.

"Hey, stop stalling and let me keep my rhythm," yelled Catherine, loosing a four-seemed _heater_.

_Whiff_!

Auct choked on thin air as he witnessed the ball rise _over _the bat, resulting in a high infield pop-up.

"My Goth, even pitches rise on this mountain."

It was true agony, following this truck down a farm road at a snail pace of seventy clicks an hour (40MPH), but at least Chang WuFei wasn't on a stakeout- Maxwell did that.

And the conversion van was moving through the air fast enough to make a.c. unnecessary.

Also, there was the satisfaction of being on the right track.

One more 'also,' a toll way- er, pike, is coming up, meaning, more speed.

WuFei gazed at the green sign.

So 'pike' doesn't have a 'y'.

Colorado Springs.

"Ma'am, is Inspector Duo Maxwell in? We have a situation," asked Trowa, looking as trustworthy as possible in a recently purchased Sunday suit, a button-less blazer, slakes, and a pocket less undershirt, all blue.

The civilian clerk interacted with a touch-screen tablet before answering.

"Sure, Sir- oh! He's in an inspection tour in Oklahoma, and I can't get hold of him at this time. Sorry!"

" Sigh , well, thank you, Ma'am, for the help."

Abruptly, blue streaked across the room and the 'honest' guy was gone.

Huff-Huff! He's in Oklahoma! An inspection tour- that's what the clerk said!"

Auct, sitting on a car hood, stared into his lap and groaned.

"Let's charter a flight."

Sure they were "rocky," but Trowa liked the sound of "THE AMERICAN ALPS," and couldn't understand why these snow-capped hills had such a dumb collective name.

He recalled seeing the really big one early in the car ride to Denver; doesn't pike have a 'y'?

Will Rodgers World Airport, OKC.

From a closed-circuit television, a low-light view of the suspect twinjet craft taxied across the concrete plain, naked and open to a determined assault.

Iria Winner had run multiple simulations to this scenario.

Many involved a con-air flight to and/or from the circuit court in Denver, so a simple trailing mission like this will be easy.

Of course, she may be called in to apprehend these guys, and then it gets a bit harder.

_May get the call, or I may not. Is Zack hesitating or what?_

Bats were in the hanger, a perfect indication that this was a good place to stay for the day.

"So, grandmaster, how are you going about finding Mister Maxwell?"

Angrily, Norm thought, _will she never stop bothering me?_

"I looked through the Space Force answering service. It seems that Maxwell made a call to his partner, Chang. The call was made from, or nearby, _Waldorf's Cafe. _If Duo asked questions, people will be talking about it at breakfast. I'll go listen to the early-risers, and you guys should stay out of the sun."

Surprised, Catherine didn't respond.

_So, he must be growing a brain after all_, she thought of Auct.

_He seemed so pathetic back in Beirut, but I guess that's what happens when people meet vampire kings; happens to the master's amusement!_

"...And you guys stay out of the sun." Iria Winner's eavesdropping beam alerted her once again of Auct's intentions.

"They'll be sleeping in the hanger, leaving Auct alone, perfect."

And Merc. Winner had a lead.

"_Waldorf's_, okay."

She theatrically turned to exit, poncho rippling through air.

7

"...As long as I shall live, the Earth shall never frizz up ever again."

The film's hero looked into space as the sun took cover under the horizon, making room for credits to role in.

Masses of mankind arose from inexpensive seating, emitting a drone of noise, as small groups of people conversed about a number of subjects.

Many older men and women excuse themselves to see "the John," and "the Jane."

Milliardo guessed they were an important couple, this John and Jane.

He tapped Relena, whom was just ahead in line to the exit, on the shoulder.

"Excuse me a moment, I must visit the John, (I'll) be back," he lied; actually he headed for the men's room.

Before reaching the room of relief, a strange behavior in young men was noticed.

Adolescent males everywhere pulled their empty hands out of caramel popcorn boxes, and announced their faith(s) to their peers.

Milliardo shook the strangeness out of his mind, pushing the men's door open.

8

"How come everyone, all the young men, I mean, are acting so funny when eating _Caramel Jacks_?"

The girls giggled, confusing If.

"Oh, you mean you haven't seen it?"

"Seen what?"

"The commercial," one girl explained, (not really) "the one with that boy- he, that voice says 'now more valuable toys are found in everyday boxes _of Caramel Jacks_," you know? - Well, that boy- he pulls his hand out (of the box?) and steam rises from his hand, you know? And he says stupidly "Look, I found religion!"

The female trio roared laughter at the recollection, leaving Milliardo in a stupor.

"My corona," he murmured, wishing for simpler times.

Waldorf's Cafe, South of OKC.

_Good java, though the tobacco flavor spoiled the taste somewhat._

Farming villages, not worthy of the term 'hamlet,' didn't follow the normal rules of commerce, allowing local farmers and assorted drivers from anywhere, and sometimes from nowhere, to smoke.

Norman Auct and Iria Winner learned this firsthand, ah, secondhand- they weren't smoking.

Auct held all the trumps in his domino game, while Iria lasted a record time on a mechanized bull.

"Smell of a ride, soldier, ya almost stoled all my shells!" Said a young stroke survivor, handing over twelve-gauge ammunition to settle his debt.

"''Preciated, friend, I earned my share. Now I need a drink," said Winner, striding to the counter/bar

A head-shaved crowd whooped applause, crowning the twenty-four year old "Queen of the cafe cowboys!"

Flopping into her stool, the mercenary began conversation with the bald kid beside her.

"So I heard an Oz lackey stormed in here yesterday. What was that all about?"

The boy's pupils expanded, surprised to hear the news travel so quickly.

"Shoot, man, you know about that?"

Iria grinned.

"Yep, came in asking about one of our boys here, or his truck, mainly."

The boy sipped some Colombian breakfast, nodding at the waitress.

"What brings you up so early, Pal?"

The kid placed his cup down and grimaced at the taste.

"An old man's fields- my working dusk-till-dawn makes me more valuable than Mexicans, who should be suffering from hangovers for another few hours."

Iria smiled internally. Political correctness didn't exist in this corner of the world. Many people raised in the mainstream world would be shocked by these generalizations about racial groups; but here, the kid was just making an "_honest" _observation.

"Well, good for you, partner," Winner prided.

"Where did you say he was headed?"

The farm-boy sipped more java.

"I didn't say, but Jones did. Said the snoop back to the ranch he was asking about."

Iria glanced toward Auct; saw a pile of illegal ammo. High stakes game, perhaps.

"Ya'll fine here?"

Auct consumed his cup contents, placed the cup near the waitress.

"I'd like more coffee, thank you."

"Same amount of sugar?"

"Sure."

"A-ight." She smiled an idiot's grin.

_New on the shift_, Norm guessed.

Turning back to the game...

He raised his domino hand up- all trumps.

The detective allowed himself to drop his poker face this time, suspecting the other players would dismiss his smile.

"She does look a little funny, don't she?"

Norman agreed with the kind-faced ranch-owner, concealing the real meaning of the smile.

"Ain't her fault her daddy lost control of his side in the Med. It just happened, you know?"

Auct gave a nod. The Mediterranean War had many, countless, surges of violence, followed by instant annihilation of the antagonizing cell. Followed quickly by a radically different organized beast, who launched a novel attack, never thought of in any form by whole masses of people.

These attacks never involved interdictions of medical evacuation teams.

Meanwhile, the antagonists- no other name fit- disappeared, apparently satisfied with the breakdown of the Oz-supported United Nations Forces.

No one knows their agenda.

No one knows the identity or even ethic group[s] of their soldiers.

The bodies evaporated, leaving no traces of identity.

Weapons became piles of dust.

Articles of clothing: common.

Gear of secondary importance: common.

Personal items: common.

This group never issued a formal statement.

"It's sad- beat you again!"

Astonishing, Auct had the three opponents ammo-belts, ending the game[s]!

Norm rose from his seat, clipping belts across his waist.

"I guess you won't play for money, so I'll be seeing you," said Auct, turning from the table.

"Okay then, take care," replied the ranch owner, lazily waving at Norm, who paid his bill, helping the drowsy girl with the register.

_Pulling out ice cream money, no doubt_, thought Ms. Iria Winner, stepping out the door, like the all-knowing hero of _Corporate Conquest_. That movie made three years ago.

8

"_Maverick Sun-Key Ranch_. That was the ranch Maxwell was asking about," said Iria, pointing toward the brown field of livestock.

"Desolate. Like Mojave or Groom Lake, but no Air Force facilities, pity," stated Sally, an early partner of Iria in the bounty hunting business.

"That's what we're here for," said Iria.

"Abdul?" Abdul, eminent virus-writer and long-time partner of Iria and the Houston Trio, Sally, Nichol, and Walker, pivoted his head stiffly.

"Has a link with your brother, Sir. I followed Mr. Winner's farm-aid donation like no one else can, and it all turned up here."

Iria bowed her head, amused stoically of the untangling plot.

_What could all this mean?_

"Anything to connect Maxwell with the ranch?"

Abdul peered at his own fingernails.

"Circumstantial. Walker walked along the ranch perimeter, searching for physical clues. He found tire marks resembling a Jeep Liberty's between the ranch and the highway.

Maxwell seemed to have lost control of his car.

With Nichol's mechanical speech skills, I found that a United Nations owned Liberty is docked- for lack of a better term- in _Baker's Repair Shop_, in Muskogee

On my request, a police officer questioned the mechanic in charge. Seems that the dash exploded. Sounds stupid, but the mechanic was sincere, according to the badge," recounted the Arabian native, all matter-of-factly, until the final paragraph.

Iria asked one more question.

"You found a small out-of-the-way mechanic shop like that...how?"

"Simple," Abdul said proudly, "I am the greatest virus-writer of all time, I just opened up a lot of car part sites, turning over fire-walls like book covers and sifted through each site's mail.

The suspect's jeep wasn't that hard to find. Laughter ."

Iria said nothing, regretting the last question.

Boy.

"Is this lorry (truck) really out running me?" Detective WuFei floored the pedal, yet his conversion van lagged behind the awesome truck, on the last leg of the toll way.

"What is a bearcat, and why is that town the home of them?" That last booth really slowed the South African detective down, giving WuFei way too much time to read posters below the overpass.

"Doesn't matter- does a _bearcat _have antlers, as the name of the town implies?"

_These idle thoughts, stop thinking them_.

"How insane, I'm going to lose him," seethed WuFei, seeing the rig drop below a distant hill.

"How could this be possible?"

Abruptly: "How's the geopolitics?"

What happened?

"Quatre, Sir, how did you surprise me like that?" A virtual Quatre Winner figure appeared, lower body covered by fog, upper body dressed as a Turkish sultan, he sprayed from a bottle.

To say the very least, Heero was surprised.

"I didn't notice you were entering...how?"

Winner smiled the smile of victors, with arms crossed, he ascended to towering heights.

"Easy, every easy. You see, I have an optical link you don't know about."

Winner's VR eyes narrowed.

"No way! I have checked and disassembled all connections again and again: it's impossible."

Winner paced atop a sand dune, having grown legs to do so.

"But in the last five minutes? Look at your barcode scanner," demanded Winner, displaying one of his own (a pen).

Heero dropped into the real world.

"Hola! What is this?" Violet light emitting from somewhere pulsed on his scanner, which resembled a razor...but what was it reading?

Yuy hopped back into VR, demanding answers.

"So I left it on, it isn't reading nada."

Quatre scolded Yuy, saying...

"But it is, you remember how convincing our holograms get, don't you?"

Yuy told Winner to "go on."

"Would you believe they could fool your barcode reader?"

The hacker grunted.

"The air vent, check it out."

Yuy typed a message to his helicopter drone. It promptly searched for the intruding device.

"I don't see a transmitter," he stated, helpless.

Q: "Use your laser-ruler carefully."

He did.

H: "You have a robotic snake clinging to the vent ceiling, in the left corner!"

"Correct."

Yuy stuttered.

"B-but how did you sneak around my box (computer) without being painted (detected)?"

Arms akimbo, Winner explained more.

"Well, I loaded an AI probe into you inventory database- you didn't see that?"

"No."

"Didn't think so. Anyway, this probe is much like the one Abdul used to poke around that Hollywood mental health clinic. Auda and a few guys helped me mutate this virus for your system."

Yuy still had his eyes narrowed, but Quatre continued.

"The probe flowed through data streams, hiding among incoming files in the vampire search, until finally, it had built a link between you and me."

The Japanese hacker was impressed.

"How...biological."

Yeah, it did seem wormy.

"Yeah, it did seem wormy,"

Said Quatre, meaning the probe resembled a parasite in its actions.

"Impressive. Maybe more so than your dogfight in the Atlantic," the hacker acknowledged.

"Sure, I guess, but that dogfight was easy; the Fangs flew in two parallel formations, easy targets for the Proximity slug-canisters, mounted on the starboard and port sides of my fighter, so simple."

"I see what you mean," Yuy agreed, beating them was a whole lot easier than beating me."

Gomer McDune- So that's his name.

"Ma thought Gunner sounded violent," explained the ranch owner, pocketing his business pen slowly.

"I see," said Norman Auct, grinning with one mouth corner raised, damming a wave of laughter. _Gomer, way out here in Mayberry!_

"Thanks for the cattle, Gomer, every McDonalds in France owes you a debt of gratitude." Auct offered McDune his hand.

McDune accepted. The agreement was official, game-set-match.

The rancher believed he was supplying the French black market with genetically altered cattle- a crime on par with mass murder in France. But in reality, Auct was going to further alter the cows into the guise of missing oxen, receiving bounties without the hard labor.

"It's an honor to feed France the good stuff; what they don't know won't hurt them, huh?"

"Same to you, Pal," thought Auct, enjoying the designed irony again (and again and again...).

"Honor?" Asked the Frenchman, rhetorically. "Yes, I'll be bigger than that British Nelson spit ."

Public Library, Muskogee, OK

For one-forth of a century, Oklahoma universities have enjoyed the most powerful backbone-and still enjoy-of all civilian networks.

Today, Duo Maxwell immerses himself into the local net, routing through a police-training academy, into the Highway Patrol logs.

On the current logs, Duo sees a crudely animated highway, with digital cartoon traffic moving at over 100 kilometers an hour.

A beige truck, moving an impossible speed, switches off his toll pass, disappearing from the screen.

A specially marked Oz van trails at too far a distance behind.

"Chang, you fool, he saw you."

Stretching out his net-immersed hand, he reduces the traffic window, moves it aside.

Opens _Baker's Repair Shop_; "Paints" other browsers. Opens more windows. Duo adds captioning to the comet-like browser images.

He tags all he can.

Maxwell up-loads a Sentry.

"Is anyone hiding in the shadows, I wonder?"

Nowhere, North Texas

Lime-dust cyclones on a rural road, obscuring vision for biped humans' visual range to that of a snake's.

A truck plows through, how strange.

It's the Beige rig, pulling into a yellow-brown lot.

_MY CORONA'S_ crew waved in this delivery machine.

The beast settled into an aluminum hanger, a short distance from the lime road. A minute later, it rumbled to a stop.

Two khaki-clad _Corona_ crewmembers paddled to the semi, reaching the left side as the door spanned outward.

A man's posterior end slid from the cabin, rolled 180, and found footing.

Oddly, Afmad saluted.

The driver managed a wave, commenting on the weather.

Ms. Noin agreed with the man's comment, as a hairy guy handled a forklift.

"What kinda monkey is that?"

Noin answered the driver.

"He's a Yowie, native to Australia. Primatologists claim he's in their jurisdiction, but female Yowies have a pouch."

"Gawl, you have a bigfoot," said the driver, dismissing the woman's "mumbo-jumbo."

"Australia finds them ideal for black ops," Afmad added.

"Why's that?'

"They're so hard to find. So few myths exist about them," Afmad explained.

"Okay."

The driver parted the trailer doors, allowing Rashid to scoop the ECM (the jammer).

"Sasquatch in the northwest were meant to protect Boeing trade secrets from Australia," said Noin.

"Uh-huh."

"Some portions of the company have been taken into protective custody at Groom Lake."

"Alright."

"That's why more of the cool stuff is flying out of Edwards and Holloman AFB (Air Force Bases)."

"Yeah."

"Nevada doesn't have room for everything, you know."

"Sure."

A tilt-rotor V-22 Osprey, visible despite the dust, hovered above tossed-up sand.

Noin and Hill pulled the brims of their AREA 51 hats over their eyes, as the driver coughed, and the yowie ignored the storm.

This yellow-green checkered craft finished its descent.

The forklift was driven through the opened door rather quickly.

"Thank you, Mr. Jones. Don't go creating any myths about your bigfoot."

The two _Corona_ crewmembers leapt into the cargo plane, leaving the rancher & driver to wonder- "who said that?"

9

Aircraft Hanger, OKC

Darkness fades in as Auct drives a cart beside the hanger. Good timing.

"Got a lead," he yelled, calling for the duo to come see him.

"Turned in a lot a bounties, made lots of money!"

The hanger door creaked open slowly, too narrow, and creaked again.

"Many thanks sigh ."

Auct ventured inward, sensing danger- twin destroyer-vampire shock-troopers are always danger- saw that the hanger-dwellers had set up a bargain priced space heater.

This propane-fed fire hazard- Auct bought it from a defective product store- heated canned soup, always a bargain.

"Nice stovetop," commented Norm, "But we gotta leave for the back roads of Northern Texas."

The two warriors exchanged displeased looks.

"Right, you got a lead," observed Catherine, disbelieving.

"Yes, I have a lead," insisted Auct, "Through a clever ruse and the right attitude I got all the answers I was looking for, and some easy bounties as well."

"I'm all packed," mumbled Trowa, even less convinced.

8

"Yes, it is true. Now, could you stop asking that?"

Norm chartered a Leer-jet for a trip to a nowhere airport in North Texas, and he thought he needed a cover story.

"Yes. The WNBA team in Montreal is looking for basketball talent in Paris, Texas- stop laughing! It is not funny that a man with a French accent wants to go to that town! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!

Catherine (speaking) is the top prospect for this women's basketball franchise. Norman is the scout. Trowa, the agent.

"A'ight, I just never had a scout from Montreal come in before," said the pilot, accustomed to routine, suspicious of the abnormal.

"But y'all seem a'ight. Let's fly."

That settled it, Auct and co. were in the lead.

After the flight, North Texas

"People find me extremely easy to talk to," gloated Norm, vectoring off the highway for a county road.

"Only a few more 'miles' as people say in this land. How do people do this- drive through this dust day-after -day?"

Trowa covered his fragile eyes as dust fell into the Pontiac convertible.

"Here it is, 'migos, the shack," pointed Auct, viewing "the shack," a giant aluminum farm hanger.

"Check it out," dared Auct, "But try not to disturb anything.

The two night-demons landed before the garage door as quick and silent as a barn swift.

"And before we knew it, we were shoved to Dunkirk," mumbled the Frenchman, awed by the speed of the burglars.

"No electronic countermeasures here," Cathy reported, after peeking in the barn, "But I did find something interesting."

Norm's eyebrows asked Cat what she meant.

"Could be a Yeti or something- footprint, I mean. Come take a look."

The detective was tugged to the scene before he could respond- yanked, really.

"Five toes. Sasquatch is said to have three, isn't it?"

Cathy replied that she didn't have a clue. Auct laughed at that, however, saying that print in itself was a major clue.

"Absolutely," she laughed, understanding.

"Jeepers roc, it must be sentient, or at least moderately intelligent, to have all those digits, don't you agree, Cathy?"

"Has to be, if it works for W.E."

"_Oui_, and stealthy."

"Neither Sasquatch nor Yeti fit this print," Trowa chimed, "Australia's Special Air Service Yowies fit the bill."

"SAS Whats?" Cathy's eyes locked on her creepy brother.

"I've heard campfire tales about old drilling wars in Antarctica. The Aussies gained rights to the Wendell Sea after ape-men stormed Argentine camps. At least that's what the boys said."

"How would your buds know about anything like that?" Catherine, what a skeptic!

"Would you believe they were there?"

"What do you mean, they um, were-"

Detective Auct intentionally stumbled in his speech, inviting the vampire to volunteer more information.

"Argentina contacted the clan through old ODESSA channels, and paid a bundle of NAZI loot for our services," he explained.

"Must have made too many campfire stories," commented Auct, inviting yet more informative yarn.

"Oh yeah, plenty. Personally, I doubt the ambush stories were true," Trowa was easy to interrogate.

"Oh, why's that?"

"Because ambushes by their very nature happen so fast. For example, one chap claims a yowie slashed him with an obsidian ax. No shattered fragments were recovered, though. Do you think it didn't fragment against a vampire skeletal frame?"

"I would never experiment the case."

The trio laughed. Cat abruptly stopped, mesmerized

"If yowies never leave behind evidence of their existence, how'd this print leave itself here?"

Auct knelt for a better look.

"Looks like the print is made up of dried mud. But it just doesn't rain here in July. What does your nose make of it, Catherine?"

Her brows tightened in concentration.

""Human urine. Carbonated beverage drinker."

Norm nodded.

"I see. The truck pulls in. (Given.) The yowie takes the ECM (assumed.) The driver takes a wiz. (Assumed.) And a helicopter or tilt-rotor carries away the counter-measure.. The yowie, even with its strength, couldn't have lifted the load without the forklift. The driver must leave the cab and walk to the trailer to open the door for the forklift. Sometime after opening the door or gate, he relieves himself. Why does the yowie step off the forklift?!" Auct madly thought through an explanation.

"Someone else must have been there, talking to the driver before the door was opened. He was held up from opening the back, and our yowie, if indeed he is, grows impatient, tries to open the door. Maybe the trailer had a lock, and the driver only closed the door[s], after our yowie did his deed. Yes, maybe our yowie opened the trailer and our driver closed the door and took a pee."

Trowa asked about the tilt-rotor/helicopter hypothesis.

"You didn't measure the sand depth in this parking lot, did you? It's thickest around the outer edges. I'm thankful this sand is lime. The print wouldn't have been left at all if a man hadn't wet sandy lime."

Eventually, Chang found the truck and driver, but he just didn't understand interrogation techniques like the French detective.

Abdul successfully followed altered records all the way to the jammer's final disposal.

Iria Winner didn't ask how Abdul did it; instead, she took a nap.

10

Duo Maxwell didn't nap; instead, he used WuFei as his eyes, seeing the empty trailer at the weigh station.

"No cargo, WuFei? What was his last shipment?"

Chang replied from the virtual station,

"The Daewoo. He says he delivered the Korean forklift."

Maxwell grinned broadly.

"So he did. You could re-enroll into a good criminology class, some new interrogation techniques are being taught at John Jay in New York, after all."

WuFei considered how to take that- was it constructive, or was Duo insulting him?

"Maybe someday, when true professionals are once again teaching," Is that a fair reply?

"You're right, absolutely. But ten years from now, I will be teaching, friend, and the many lecturers may settle into teaching."

Must have been the right thing to say.

"I'm guessing our driver used a back road to avoid the station, right?" WuFei agreed.

"He couldn't have taken the jammer much farther south than this, and he most likely didn't dump it on the highway. I'm arranging for a drug taskforce to handle the Oklahoma search. You can take Texas, chap. This is the time of year the Marijuana searches begin out here anyway."

North Texas is a big place for one van. Oh boy.

_Cold people are in that Pontiac!_ One can react strangely to something so- well- strange. Chang's van rolled six times, ripped through a fence, and instantly killed an emu. His heavy head activated the car horn, attracting more Aussie birds.

The Pontiac convertible swerved to avoid the "median crossing" van- failing, but stopping before nailing an oak. (A fencepost stopped them.)

Wuf managed to hit an emergency button on his phone before falling out his open door.

"Two people in that car didn't have an IR signature."

He mingled with the emu crowd best he could, meekly hoping his visible IR signature, his heat, would blend with the birds.

"Why did I do that? Now two cold boogiemen are searching for me in pitch black, either wanting to take my insurance or my blood!"

One handful of twilight was left, but Brevet General Thurman Dynamics fit skeet shooting into his day.

"Pull," he said in a preoccupied tone.

The wee little oak bolt split air once it left the war-harp.

Thurman pulled his rifle skyward, prepared to nail this arrow that didn't care.

The Detroit native squeezed the trigger, missing by a hair.

"Drat!"

His pocket zapped him.

Duo Maxwell called.

"Hola, 'migo, wazzup?

Got a DEA sweep going on if you want to join, it involves your trouble at Space Command."

"Sure thing. [I am] going for the jump-jet now." He shut down the phone as he lifted his rifle.

"Pull!"

The green neon shaft divided, split in the center, and fell, as dusk became night.

"Hey! No need to run! If you're intoxicated I understand... I am French, after all!"

Many international players know that kind voice- Norman, a.k.a Rene Dupuis, retired French cop.

(Auct once spoke at a large Interpol seminar about terror-hunting clerical systems. WuFei was Maxwell's proxy.)

"Auct, is your ugly mug in this pitch black?"

"Is your pitch black mug in this pitch black, Chang?"

"Those are fighting words, 'migo!"

Auct was undeterred from approaching the mock-offended South African.

"Who are your cold friends?" Chang ventured dangerously.

"This," Norm gestured, "Is Sir Trowa, born of the old warrior nobility in his land."

Norm and Cat shared a silent laugh as Wuf flinched from the chilling handshake.

"And this lady is Catherine, twin of Trowa."

One can't recoil forever; they shook hands.

Auct's mother had poor circulation (therefore a little cold in the hands) and she trained young Rene Dupuis in her job in the morgue, so Auct was never disturbed by physical contact with vampires.

"Are they-?"

"No, Wuf, they aren't the living dead. They are a living nocturnal sub-species of humans, so to speak."

"They evolved-?"

"Vampires aren't natural. Don't be a fool."

Wuf adjusted his specs.

"What do you mean, I was born with HIV antibodies and cured the AIDS epidemic in my-"

"I know, but did you ever wonder who fed the Minotaur?"

"What?"

"The bull that lived in the giant labyrinth!"

It hurt to gulp. This is worse than the AIDS prevention "talks" on African radio.

"Slaves?"

"Your average day-walking human slave couldn't survive giving proper veterinary care to the massive Taurus in complete darkness. So, new slaves had to be bred. Quite the undertaking. A super race with what modern literary critics consider absurd shortcomings was created.

They shy away from crucifixes, they burn when drenched in holy water, silver also burns them. They recoil at the smell of wolf bane and garlic!"

Here come more foolish questions!

"How can such man-like inventions not have a pulse?"

Catherine objected to being called an invention.

"Hearts don't have to pump, stupid! A rotary engine-like flagella moves the blood around!"

"How-"

"Of coarse we breathe, idiot!"

"Why-?"

"Because I don't need you idly thinking stupid thoughts when you help run some searches for us tomorrow," Norm interrupted briskly, getting to the point that he wants something.

"The man is right. We are the oldest civilization on Earth, (vampires built the Sphinx for the Minoans!) and we killed our masters in a super coup, (the coup coincided with the Moses defection) and we now need your help if we are to survive through this century.

-TO BE CONCLUDED

(Note: "MASTER OF Quatre AND TIME" means: "Ruler of Industry and News Services" in 2020 slang.)


	3. Bloodbath

"This is the place," concluded the MASTER OF Quatre AND TIME (power over industry and newspapers), Iria Winner, indicating an insignificant point above Shreveport, Louisiana.

"You think so? Doesn't your gut tell you this?"

"Think back to the cyber attack on Space Command," Iria demanded her new co-investigator, Duo, looking into the man's eyes for recognition.

"For all of NASA's innovations, they are not responsible for National Defense."

The white African concurred.

"Okay, they are a civilian organization."

"Yes. So our Space Force must be the defender."

Iria took a long sip of water.

"I'm not following."

"The remote access Trojan Horse attack was too easy to clear up, was it not?"

The God of Death considered.

"Right. I just rebooted a terminal and it all worked fine, come to think of it."

The mercenary rolled her chair closer to her new partner's side of the table.

"My boy Abdul says only a Japanese console cowboy named Heero Yuy could carry out that attack. He surely doesn't want to interfere with some space spectacle."

Duo chose to take a guess.

"A nuclear test in space?"

It was confirmed with silence.

"Which brings us to Louisiana. A mobile-cabin belonging to W.E. rests there," she pointed at a close-up of an astronomy-astrography commune.

"Great place for viewing what many will believe is a supernova."

"No amount of computer simulation is good enough for the military, ergo, a thermo nuke will attempt to vape a ten-mile diameter Kuiper object tugged into Venus orbit."

Iria, Norman, and Duo, with WuFei, arranged a quick conference, held in a nightclub after hours, a short drive from the Holliday Inn, where Thurman Dynamics checked in. Norman Auct and the Vampires stayed at a slightly shabbier inn, still cleaner than a packed immigration den. Iria and crew had an RV at a park near the theatre complex, minutes away in average traffic.

"From the imitation-marble stage, General Dynamics grudgingly asked everyone if they accepted Winner's hypothesis.

The majority didn't express opinion (the majority being under someone's command), but the remaining leading minority voiced "yea!"

With that finished, the Viscount gained leadership status. Trowa likened her to Lex Luthor's role in the LEGION OF DOOM.

"Thank you for your confidence. Many others here have earned enviable reputations, and I'm confident this boat would run smoothly under the command of these others," she accepted the position with modesty.

"Now that we have a location we agree on, we must agree on a mission based on solid intelligence. That means, in part, an experienced scout party. Trowa and Taylor are the best we have. They should sit-in with my team in a general discussion, while General Thurman Dynamics supervises the detectives in public information gathering. Strike Team Saturn should train at the paintball range. My boss will pay for all expenses."

The masses put hands together repetitively, welcoming the smiling coalition leader.

PATCHING THE ALLIANCE

"He's in the air, Zack, and he's going south at nearly 400 knots. Now, may I have some clear instructions?"

Iria Winner verbally blasted her employer, hoping for a strong resolution in the Auct affair.

"I thought your type relished information gathering duties, preferring such jobs to the dirty deeds of Warlords," replied Hamlet, absenting, "Very well, underneath it all, I couldn't find a masterstroke but this- align your team to his, and find those kids. Look, we can't beat ourselves just to beat him. I'm sure we'll all betray in the end, anyway!"

The Viscount turned to Walker, seeking approval. A nod. Sally, a nod. Nichol and Abdul, thumbs up. Ford shrugged.

"Zack, we can set it up, but I'm not sure he has the trail," Iria relented.

"His team will bounce thoughts at you, and vice versa, ergo, voila!"

Only Abdul spoke dweeb, helping with a translation.

"Oh, he deduct as we reconstruct!"

_Ergo, voila; from dweeb to dude-speak_.

"Leave it to us, Hamlet, I actually wield some power where he's going."

"That's so cavalier of you; do as you wish."

Zack phased away, leaving the bounty hunters alone.

An awkward silence followed.

"Gee, I was hoping for a spare minute to liberate President Kennedy's head from the mother ship and instate Elvis as Shah of Iran, but you just volunteered that bit of my calendar," Cracked Sally, laughing, "I'll order Dominoes to heat a pizza as we fly over."

Brock seconded longingly, wishing for something other than coffee in his system.

"Okay then, we have a mixed flight element of old straight-winged F-22s and Aries mobile-suit Workhorses, feigning a lack of power for aerial refueling. Throttling the Fangs to the wall, we can catch Auct. The Raptors land at the Municipal Airport, while the "Stallions" land on him as he parks the rental car," decided Hamlet's Chief Plummer, the Viscount.

"I'll have the flight controller circle the Leer around so the F-22s can land and taxi ahead. That way, maybe he won't know something's afoot," Abdul suggested, as his partners boarded fighters.

"I don't see a reason for that, but it can't hurt," said Iria, bruising Abdul's pride, before a carted generator "Turned over" the twin Pratt and Whitney engines.

_That ingrate cowgirl._

So it comes to pass that the bounty hunters shave time to cloak deep into a hanger.

The private eye stifles a blink, tunneling vision while sweeping all the venue, but still, he spies no trail.

Nichol, exhibiting mild curiosity, glances about the parking lot after closing the hood on a "wreck" – a pre fuel cell Shelby GT 500 () that runs just fine, but thanks.

He exchanged a few words with the distraught Community College student about his own jalopy, his aged Camero, and about his planned investment in a Dodge Viper from the late fossil fuel era.

The student thanked him for his Texan chivalry, and gave him an address to a secret rave in the failed industrial park.

"The smurfs (police) don't breakup unions (parties) there, so don't spaz (panic). The pass(word) is bail."

Nichol repeated "bail" as Auct and his agents motored away.

"Let's move, Sally," said Nichol, entering a completely legal zero emitting Oldsmobile.

"You should lose the wig."

Sally chucked her blue hair, opting for dark plagued rows.

Nichol lightened his skin and sported rimless glasses.

The Olds, a Towncar, couldn't hold a candle to the limitless power of the Detective's Pontiac GTO, but the need didn't exist, for Iria and Walker circled seven miles above, watching via a holographic charged coupled device (HCCD) pod, viewed through a retinal etch, or if of secondary importance, a liquid crystal display (LCD).

Iria and Walker didn't speak, because the mere existence of radio traffic between flights at that altitude could tip off Norman.

Nichol and Sally, however, shared a car.

"Awe, this one has four different cheeses with otherwise a supreme topping," decided Nichol, offering Sally a slice.

"Gimme!"

"Sure thing. The other pizza is a patchwork of peppers, yum."

An idea struck Sally as she handled a pizza slice with her freehand.

"Walker must be dying to speak with Iria, so why not route him through our phone?"

Walker agreed.

"I agree."

His finger pressed [TALK].

"Hola! Soy Nichol. Habla a Iria?"

"Wait, you just said, 'Hello, I'm Nichol, you want to talk to Iria? Walker translated well.

"What of it? This phone can open a line to you and Iria," responded Nichol, dialing the other jet.

"Nichol?" Iria guessed.

"No, it's Walker."

"Walker? But you might-"

"Nichol and Sally's phone is working as a switchboard, so we ain't violating your rule."

Iria conceded, seeing this to be true.

"I guess you're right, but what do you have to say?"

"I dunno, but arranging it's cool, huh?"

"Yeah. Check it out, they're really speeding down that country road!"

A giant dust tail trailed in wake of Auct's GTO.

Like a cloak hiding among daggers, the shroud highlighted the car.

"Look, Chief," screamed Walker, "That roadrunner is simulating a carrier's wake! Permission to touch-and-go, Sir?"

Iria thought it over.

"I saw a small airfield just south of us. Do your mock landing, then let's stop there and fill up."

"Roger!"

Landing gear extended, Walker held the HOTAS firmly as he tapped the car's end at 135 knots.

"You're nuts, Man, a flying circus nut," Iria laughed, corkscrewing at ten gees, "Now we land, okay? Our other team is on 'em now."

Walker said nothing as he turned deeply to the east, arming his radar when finished.

"Where'd he go? Sally, Nichol?"

But they replied,

"Sorry, Walker, we're watching someone else."

Panicking, Walker popped his stiff neck peering past one shoulder, then, the other- still, blue sky. Forward.

"Ah!"

Iria and her Stallion passed by Walker; a brief metal-on-metal sound followed.

"You're dead. Now land that sucker!"

After touch-down

"Man-oh-man, you weren't in the sky!" Walker flinched away as Iria tossed her helmet overhand, striking his right flank.

"That's right, I landed, just like I told you to do, but you didn't listen! I came in hot and touched with my front and left wheel, hopped, helicoptered 35 degrees, and taxied 145 degrees. Then, I eyed you visually while rollng through my own touch-and-go."

Walker laughed hysterically.

"Oh man! Are you a cowgirl or what?"

Iria seemed pleased.

"You know, if I'd simmed an old AIM-9 Lima, you'd still be toast," she chuckled, scooping his thrown helmet.

"Now let's fuel up."

"They shouldn't play around like that, especially at night."

Nichol considered himself reckless, But Sally knew better.

"Those guys ARE adventurers, but they think as responsively as 1950s test pilots, and they'll know their limits when they find 'em," he answered, before burning his throat

on chunky pizza pepper.

"Wow, so you can think about more than machines!"

She was rewarded with a pre-emptive food strike, as a result, the car became stained with tomato sauce- but hey, it's a rental, so who cares?

"Take that back!"

"Stop it, you're getting topping on my binocs!"

Amazing any survailing was accomplished, with these agents violating all the "time and place" rules.

Time Flies

At long last, Norman and Company finished observing the plot of packed lime and gravel, and hit the road once again- the dust escapes the road.

Despite the GTO's speed and dust trail, the Oldsmobile, with all its reliability, kept its thermal imager on the Pontiac.

Sally strayed cautiously, blunting the 'mobile's headlights, and lagging, as Auct neared the highway.

From above, Iria and Walker stalked in 'a vulture's eight,' as added insurance.

A few miles ahead, all seems well, when a white van suddenly rushes across the median, abruptly sending Auct's car into a fence.

"Go ahead (then) pull over at that station, Sal- we'll watch from here," Iria ordered, helplessly viewing the makings of a roadside shootout.

One party, a party of one, hides among a flock of emu, masking his heat source, as two vampire bodyguards do their job.

The lone man now comes out, resolving things, and it seems they chat.

"Sally, they've halted; let's make our move," Iria gave the word, dropping for a vertical landing as Walker buzzes the Pontiac.

Meanwhile, Sally drives Nichol along the shoulder, touting a sedative-smoke grenade launcher in her freehand.

The maniac's return (Walker's buzzing) caught the astonished attention of the two parties concerned. Naturally, they turned their astonished heads.

This saved Sally and Nichol the long range trouble of alert armed opponents.

The first round of smokes, because of Walker, landed without notice.

Without complete awareness, Auct and friends failed to prevent the next wave.

By the time Trowa freed a round, Winner and her stun gun tapped Cathy, then the sleepy Auct, from behind.

"Surrender right now!" Nichol flashed a pulsating laser toward Trowa for his benefit, while Walker parted the emu flock in his landing.

"Now we just want to patch an alliance so we can figure some questions out, 'kay?"

2

ALL PATCHED UP.

Seamlessly patched under the Viscount's leadership.

It's another balmy Texas July night, and the Audition begins.

An astronomy camp is set up, a patchwork of trailers and cabins.

Ford, the master spy, moves into the prefab near the 'nowhere gate,' while the 'Peacecraft cabin' rests nearer the 'Shreveport gate.'

Cathy plays the W.E. security boss. Iria, being of Milliardo's skill level, plays him, and Sally is now Relena.

Abdul is somewhere in the commune, operating as an 'unmarked' Winner Enterprises guard, while Nichol and Walker are fully glittered with badges and whistles.

A Chevy Suburban carries a W.E. strike team two miles out. W.E. sharp shooters, two a team, cover four corners.

Besides Abdul, Saturn team has Trowa counter sniping, and Saturn team itself jumping High Altitude Low Opening at Legion's command. (Ford, if Trowa is canceled.)

The two guards have "blue" paint cartridge-loaded 357s and Abdul has a "blue" .38 Walther PPK. Iria carries a paint-tipped epée' fencing sword. Sally is unarmed- while everyone else uses MILES gear.

The HALO is being preformed in an L-188 Electra- a gutted P-3 Orion- in this case, an EP-3 Orion, surplus from Japan. This ELINT bird no longer passes muster along the Korean coast, with Pyongyang's island growing policy- tossing dirt-covered barges at sea to expand territorial waters, so Japan's Self Defense Force is upgrading.

America, home of the Earth Sphere Alliance, has another idea; as signers of the Open Skies Treaty with Russia, the Air Force flies its RC-135s (707s) along the northern border, where not even a semi-legit reason for a shoot-down exists.

The Alliance Navy hopes to fill the gap with a hidden pod somewhere aboard airliner flights.

Saturn team's leader, the Carpathian Io Romanov, understood the need for these planes, although, he admits, he used to believe all these flights were conspiracy bent, an elaborate ruse to cover up the Satellite intelligence biz.

Zack Hamlet, called him "a Neanderthal, and told him only a fool would believe Nations would beam secret transmissions into an ELINT satellite if possible not to- and the western nations would risk an international crisis on a ruse...fathead!"

Okie doak, so Japan really needs a new airframe, and so the ESA will provide two trial EF-18 Electric Hornets, until SDF finds their own solution.

'Well, their dilemma gives me a solution here,' though Io.

'This'll make a great jump, once that vampire squares things away.

After a long crawl, Trowa slowly moved to square things away.

A Winner Enterprises sharpshooter, hidden in a tree-house like duck-blind, scanned his perimeter with a wide-angle scope.

At 700m out, Trowa, half buried under his shapeless gillie suit, placed his red LED "crosshair" on the man's temple, and depressed the three pound force trigger, freeing the MILES equivalent of a .30 Dragonev round.

Under the rifle lay a Nokia phone. He pressed send.

One instant, Ford Taylor sits in an observatory, pretending to watch stars, and the next, he has to drop some guards.

"Thank you," he prays, as the call comes in. Through his observatory's black curtain, he peeks out and hoses around his micro Uzi.

He pretends to wince as he's notified Security Guard Walker managed to take his arm off with his .357, before being completely hosed.

Then he cursed for missing Abdul, the Walther carrier.

Abdul had no celebration, for he fended off the paras- poorly.

"Man down," said Io, leading his team forward.

"Dazzle 'em."

A team member did so, using flashing lights and sound.

But as expected, Cathy suffered no ill effect, and her hypersonic slugs ripped through a trailer, drilling Io.

"Man down!"

More rail-run rounds brushed by, until...silence, then the go code from Trowa.

"And hurry, I can't kill that guy with the sword!"

The team survivers "rogered," sprinting to the rescue.

Iria jinked and jumped her dervish dancing like a galloping Barry Sanders of red foxes, switching the light fantastic for Sally and her flanking attack.

Trowa madly gunned for her feet, knees, thighs, but a wounding shot proved to difficult for the sniper rifleman at short range.

En garde, he fended a long thrust, parried a sweep kick, hooked an ankle, Iria being exhausted from her charge.

Downed, Iria kept Trowa at length, feet blocking bold action.

The vampire settled with a kick in the base of "Milliardo's" spine.

At that time, "Relena" somersaulted her feet into his cheek, dropping Trowa half-cold.

At that time, Saturn arrived, tasing the Peacecraft's at range.

Sally fell ill, but Iria swatted the taser-wires to the ground.

One man gummed the dead-man switch shut (on his stun gun) and tossed it to the man's torso.

Iria bought time for the strike team, however, for the Chevy arrived in the nick-of-time.

Trowa came to, and set to work.

At 800m, the Chevy machine gunner ate a MILES round, the passenger gunner grew a simulated Cyclopes-eye; the motor-works shut down.

"Find the LZ," yelled Trowa, dropping the first 'derelict Chevy exiter,' capping the next.

And next.

Two rounds left.

The third man stuttered, but Trowa held patient. A forth man fired his long rifle over the back door; Trowa held still.

Surely "Covered," the third man charged. Zap.

As man four adjusted aim, his M-14 took a MILES hit.

Trowa only carried two magazines, and now they're gone.

So are his buds.

At last, after a lull in action, a survivor ended Trowa's role with a proximity-fused LAW-66 rocket.

Strike Team Saturn, and two prisoners, were gone.

At the Inn.

It's not every day people are happy about being zapped in a way game, but Io Romanov's team couldn't help but applaud Trowa, the hey player in the mission.

"Excellent work, everyone," said Iria, after announcing Trowa's kill count at seven: two sharpshooters, Cathy, and four men from the Chevy (as well as the Chevy itself and a rifle rendered useless), "You out fought computer simulations and defeated the worst case scenario with two casualties. Ford, your injuries were survivable, but for all practical purposes, you were eliminated."

"Suits me- I'd rather see a nurse than the reaper," Ford replied, with members of the opposing team seconding.

"We all understand your sentiment, and that's why we drill. Everyone passed. Trowa, myself, and Cathy pass with honors. Ford, Abdul, good spying. Under the circumstances, good shot, Walker," he laughed deviously, "You okay where Sally nailed you?" Everyone looked at Trowa; he shrugged.

"It looked jaw-shattering to me, but if you're fine, we'll drop you tomorrow night, and Ford, go get five hours of sleep. Then shower, have a snack, then sleep on the turbo-prop flight. That's all."

With that over with, the team flooded from the lobby.

In an RV park, somewhere in the Red River valley, Heero worked completely alone, on his own time.

Minutes before, he'd worked in augmented reality while assembling a late dinner of garden goods and processed roast beef, but now, he rests back in his chair, immersed in the web.

Online, a buoy tosses with the choppy sea, around Baker's Repair Shop; Duo Maxwell's sentry.

Heero wishes to raise enough red flags to make it squeal, so in this case, he starts by raising another flag, the Winner Enterprises standard.

Flag one.

He spams the Baker E-mail box.

Flag two.

He inquires about the Maxwell crash and pays 300% on a part (a tip?).

Flags four and five.

He says "Put this on credit for me (the 300%)"

Flag six.

Next he weakly interrogates the sentry, before punching out with RESET.

Flags seven and eight.

The sentry is compelled to call Duo directly.

This was traced by Yuy's A.I. probe, using the high-end hyper-computer Heero is currently logging onto.

"I may not skate, cracker, but I'm a lubefoot just the same," he said, tickling his holdout keyboard.

"The Holiday Inn, Paris, Texas. Hombre! Room number-oh- a big ole suite! And what does out mapping former NRO say?"

He tapped the quick dial button.

"What a rip-off! No high resolution shots? Fine, I have other means."

The guest registry windowed up, listing a Duo Maxwell and a WuFei Chang. Colonel Thurman Dynamics also showed up.

Grainy low resolution bitmaps windowed with a mouse-arrow hover.

"MPEG would be welcome, stingy manager man," he raspberried.

Obviously, the man controlling the "books" enjoys cutting back.

"No fooling? Have I found you working with Dynamics?"

On the other end, WuFei sat with his tablet pc, running his thoughts.

"Duo, wake up, a team of hackers sniffed us out," he alerted, leaving an invitation.

" Yawn , Winner Enterprises? Are they Winner hackers?"

"Yep, and they know our room."

Without another word, the South Africans sprinted to the door, slapped the lock, and motored out.

Duo keyed the engine and slid into the van.

He gunned into reverse, applied some break, and 180ed a bit sloppy, before flooring.

He left a rubber arc as he turned off the exit ramp and scrambled for a twenty-four hour store parking lot.

"Can we do anything for Thurman?"

Even as WuFei asked, he new the question would prove futile.

"Absolutely not! He's not on our side, even if we are working together!"

""Fine, let's just hide away."

By a twenty-four hour supermarket.

It took a Labor Day weekend of sitting at a curb in a Pontiac Aztec, interpreting static radio-transmitting from the home computer of an Oklahoma Highway patrolman putting in hours and hours of work at home, but Heero fully understands the workings of the criminal justice system throughout the state.

From the experience, he's compiled a one-thousand-four hundred and four bit holographic smart card, with unfettered access to the law and order process.

These days, he reaps information as easily as Maxwell can, but at this delicate time, the South African sentries loom the traffic logs.

Sometimes, the delicate times will trip the wires; and Heero is in that time.

So, much like a bull in a china shop, he goes postal, copying whole folders, leaves the Highway Patrol logs, and digests Maxwell's monitored drive to the Inn offline, commits them to disk, and heads out again.

Before dawn, when most eyes are sealed shut or rapidly moving across dreamworld, an eight foot Australian primate dodges every deviant non-night-sleeper, and scopes for a white utility van.

As he covers all the concealable places, this night-crawler tugs at his two-way radio.

"This is Raven," said the shaggy Yowie, "We have no shooters, so punch."

Simultaneously, buses cover the exits, both front and back.

W.E. agents, toting stun carbines, spill from both buses.

"Stand by to storm."

The strike team is seconds away, and Heero must hurry to legalize it.

Quickly, he flows through the proper channels, and files a bounty.

His request goes through, naturally.

"Go! Go! Go!"

They moved.

Careful not to ignite conflict, the agents spotted the lonely van with gun-barrel flashlight beams, and announced themselves as bail enforcement agents.

One could count the agents by the lightbeam, the illuminating guns were so tightly focused.

Chang and Maxwell stubbornly held still.

Bang!

Suddenly the back service door gave, exposing rump.

"I got the door, and they should be sedated, though I wouldn't count on it," Afmad spoke for the record, though no one listened.

"Advance!" Everyone heeded Captain Noin, however, and moved to apprehend the surrendering duo.

"I'd also like to say, for the record, the water cannon blew off the lock, and the zeppelin drone's electric wench wrestled the remaining door off."

"Down! Down!"

"Stop clubbing us!"

Once the nabbing ended, Lucrezia looked over.

"Afmad?"

"Yes?"

"You can edit that last part out, can't you?"

"You can't do this, you know, you're violating international law."

Afmad and Lucrezia shared a laugh.

"You have a poor understanding of international law. You see, here in Texas, we have loopholes to such distractions. We may not be as enlightened as people from other states and nations, but we make our laws work for us. We just captured a registered bounty in the state the contract was filed, and we brought you in legally," Noin lectured, adding, "Being on secretive missions all the time, you lack diplomatic status, so we'll detain you until your interview is finished."

"Very well, I can even volunteer information, if you wish," spoke Maxwell, unwrapping caramel hard candy.

"We were with Colonel Dynamics, you know, so where is he?"

Ms. Noin frowned.

"At the Inn. Now, please continue making your statement."

"Yes, of course..." Afmad typed the statement until his fingers swelled too stiff.

Nocturnal life scrambled for their lives as Sol returned the world to man, so they could safely go about business.

In hotels and trailer parks reflecting the rays, men rose and took their leave.

One alliance of men walked to their work place, along and across a major multilane highway.

Soon they met with Thurman Dynamics and Io Romanov- just Dynamics and Romanov.

"Are we missing anyone? Should I role call?"

Thurman sighed.

"No, Iria. Duo and WuFei just aren't around anymore. It seems they just fled last night, sorry."

Iria nodded.

"And Auct?"

"Nature called. Their leaving left him anxious."

Abdul snickered audibly.

"Here he comes, guys."

Did Sally say that?

He rushed past tables the best he could, breaking a light sweat.

"Iria! Is everything still a go?"

"Yes," she began, "Taylor goes into the field. In the meantime, I'll seek guidance from my boss. Walker, come with me. Thurman, you and Auct are one and two in the chain-of-command until we return. We'll see you."

Iria and Walker retraced paths before finally detouring for the Oldsmoble.

Walker, recklessly dodging traffic, turned the key and claimed the driver's chair.

Iria breathed heavily as a passenger, eyeing the controls with envy.

"To the municipal airport; we take the workhorses out for a flight to New York- and no dog fighting!"

"Roger that."

7-4-2023Priority

Dear Sir,

At one zero nine AM, by legal order of the court, the signatory members of 'My Corona' captured Oz Inspectors Duo "Death" Maxwell and WuFei "China" Chang in the WAREHOUSE SAVER parking lot.

As Heero's report will confirm, the arrest was legal.

Interrogation

After the arrest, Lieutenant Afmad and I interviewed our subjects.

Using standard tactics, we separated the two men in custody into different detention areas.

Results are below.

Noin: " You are to speak clearly in English with as little profanity as possible, and any untrue statements can be held against you. Understand?"

Maxwell: "I do."

Noin: "Great. Now let's begin."

Maxwell: "Yes?"

Noin "Mr. Maxwell, what is your relationship with Colonel Dynamics?"

Maxwell: "Thurman and I have, or had, rather, a cooperation with Io Romanov, Iria Winner, and an unknown employer of Iria. Our goal was the capture of two people of interest- Milliardo Peacecraft, and Relena Peacecraft. I don't know the motive for the other parties, but my intent was an interview with the Romanians, because, you see, Oz senses tension between Ukraine and Romania."

Noin: "You and your evil crew discussed a kidnapping plot; we need operational details."

Maxwell: "Of course. Iria labeled an astronomy commune north of Shreveport the location of the Peacecrafts.

Within hours, an observer team will drop into a WAYERHOUSER tree farm besieging the commune.

Once scouted, the area will be over run by a strike team. The strike plan depends on factors Iria is still unsure of, but a helicopter extracts the team and the two Peacecrafts.

Noin: "Thank you. Now if you please, who were the mercenarybounty hunters with Ms. Winner?"

Maxwell: "Walker, Somebody, Nichol, Sally, Ford, and Abdul."

Noin: "And Io Romanov, can you tell me about him?"

Maxwell: "Sure, Blond haired Carpathian Mountain Man. Tall, 185 centimeters, and cut like Jean Claude Van-Damm.

He had around eight guys with him, but I can't be sure. They had the He-man vibe, and they all looked like Dolph LundgrenHulk Hogan knock-offs."

Noin: "Was their hair cut like Anakin Skywalker's in _Star Wars: Attack Of The Clones_?"

Maxwell: "Yeah, that's the cut!"

Noin: "Thank you, Sir."

(Discontinued).

There you have it, Boss.

Supplemental interview with J. Schmitt.

Afmad: "So Norman Auct, A.K.A Rene Dupuis, had vampire bodyguards, and Strike Team Saturn is made up of Norse Warriors?"

Chang: "Both statements are true."

Afmad: "Quite the pantheon of monsters, huh?"

Chang: "Was that a question?"

(Discontinued. [Smack]).

3

"She's my sister!"

Heero snorted.

"Are you auditioning for a role in one of my web-films, Sir?"

Quatre roared with laughter.

"It is one of the clichés you're fond of!"

That's cold, really cold.

"So, Yuy, can you find... my sister! I hope my security team has followed my orders to always probe for her," the boss warned, eyeing his steepled hands.

"Yes, Sir, we always have a loose enough net around her and many contacts of hers," assured the hacker, "to the point that we know the pay from her last job. As I've told you before, she didn't take a wet work job. Okay, we have high resolution Zeppelin drones on many drop sites, and we now have people looking over intercepted public surveillance photos.

"I know. If I can trust his transponder, she's got some fighter planes hidden in Paris, Texas. That's no small feat!"

"You'll know where she goes when she takes off?"

Yuy affirmed.

"I'll need Rashid, Noin, and Afmad to move into 'My Corona' and we'll prep for takeoff."

"Yes, Sir, but what of Louisiana?"

Quatre lifted the phone.

"I think we should show them some of the finer parts of the State."

"Please, just another minute, it's airing!"

Une, if no one stops the insanity, will scream like the woman in King Kong's hand if this continues another minute!

"Look, I found religion! I get it I truly get it, a-and it's so funny!"

'I understand something else,' Une thought angrily, 'Milliardo Peacecraft, you are a definite sign of the coming apocalypse!'

As the caramel commercial waxed away, the cyborg grasped the clicker, pressed power.

"Milliardo, your anonymity has been compromised- where's your sister?"

The hybrid vampire's mind swam back into reality.

"She's probably jumping on that vaulting trampoline thing with Jewel and Greek Goddess what's-her-namesake."

"How much television did you watch, anyway?"

Struggling from his chair, Milliardo answered.

"Enough that I forgot how to move."

'Oh brother!'

"Do you need a crash course?"

IF waved his hands protectively.

"Chill, man, it's all good!"

Oddly, she couldn't help it; Une shared a laugh with the TV addict.

"You're right, I watched too much, but let's put that behind me; let's go."

From the mobile-cabin they left.

Sure as Milliardo's word, the girls were on the hopping platform, though they seemed in a post-jumping state.

"You sure you want to pull her from her new friends?" IF whispered to Une, seeing Relena enjoy her friendship.

"Of course not, but like I said-"

(Rude interruption).

"I know, but how many times do we need to pull her from a compromised location? Do you think that's good for her?"

Une stared, dumbstruck.

"Did you watch too much Lifetime, boy? We need to be serious here and logical, like real people!"

The Count observed the green grass.

"I must have overloaded with my viewing," he laughed, "So I guess I should steer clear of vices!"

Une joined the chuckling, but still, difficulty remained.

"Hey, girls, I've got a stack of Ben Franklins; want to go gambling on a paddlewheel?"

Problem solved.

The sister climbed vertically from zero to nearly sixty thousand feet in a few shades over a minute, while the brother pinnacled at more-or-less eighty thousand feet in more time.

One climbed from North Texas, while the other ascended from Southern Oklahoma.

Through the careful coordination of the B-70 Valkyrie crew_, My Corona_ never exposed itself to Aries' radar.

"All is perfect, Sir. We are steadily holding 85,000 feet at mach 3.3, and our MCSTAR uplinks contact us to our Fokker Mobile-doll UCAV fighters, trailing the Workhorse deuce," Noin reported to the flight cabin, via intercom.

"Smashing, as James Bond might say, as a pun in a silly scenario, of course," Winner relied, while playing virtual scifi squash with a holographic player; poorly, this time.

He notched down the opponent from rocket belt toting moon girl-fashioned contender, to the slower moving lumpy-suited astronaut.

"If I might make a suggestion, Sir..."

Noin paused.

"Yes, Captain?"

"Apollo there is to easy for you, so I think you should set silver-clad sixties chick to novice, and continue stacking skill."

'Nuts, novice.'

"Computer, down one Luna tic, but up one unit."

A wise idea.

Over Pennsylvania

"Iria, those UFOs have been flirting with my vision since we crossed into Tennessee," Max cautioned, "They're now at forty thousand feet on your eight."

"I see them, a deuce of drones, the new Fokker models," she answered, taking a long look herself, "Let's split-S and splash them!'

"Attacking, Sir!"

Heero booted Quatre from the moon to a cockpit, too abruptly for most to handle.

Afmad, already in a cockpit, assumed a virtual one.

Exchanging preliminary low percentage shots, four warbirds descended, reaching different troughs in their dives.

Max came out highest, while Quatre had the low ground.

As promised in an unwritten contract, Iria half climbed and corkscrewed in a high- gee Immalman, painting Afmad's drone, while Walker gunned his engines to dash away from the fray.

Here, as in theory, Afmad banks, in this case starboard, to escape Iria's weapons umbrella.

With the Aries' powerful engines, the underpowered drones have no chance of catching Walker before he can turn and acquire with his radar.

The contract assumes the second drone has only two options, assist in hunting Iria, which gives a slim chance of a kill, or chase Walker, a bad move, for it gives almost no chance of a kill, and a slim chance of surviving a few seconds more.

Quatre placed his thoughts on an alternative; a variation, granted, of option two.

"Iria, I only have one shot; your bandit. The other is terrain-masking: I can't get a shot!"

That's right, when Quatre had the low ground, he kept it.

"Then kill this one, will you?"

Iria and Afmad sky-danced, doomed never to resolve their match.

"Right!"

Walker squeezed off a medium-ranged shot, dared to wait three odd seconds, and curved toward the other drone.

Literally battling uphill, drone two fired a poor shot. Next, nearly stalling, the drone rudders to a skid, and popped more shots.

"Some of those were descent shots!"

Walker, however, handled the unimportant damage.

Entering Iria, throttling mach two.

Lacking a clear AMRAAM shot (Drone two was eclipsed by Walker), she flipped to short range and passed his pal.

Whack!

"Splash two," shouted Iria, "Though my airframe's cracked up- he kamikaze[d] me in the nose!"

The pilot drained some altitude, for his canopy loomed on the verge of shattering.

"My damage is on the other end," Walker spoke, descending with her.

Once all looked swell, he grinned at breaking Iria's post-takeoff rule.

4

"Once we're in International waters, you can play, but right now, watch the cyborg," Une scored twenty-one again.

"That's right, but once outside Earth Sphere jurisdiction, I can have you leave the blackjack tables, Shredder," snarled the dealer, upset at his negative profit margin.

"IF you use that Ninja Turtles slur again, I'll take my business to Gold City!"

That's right, South African casinos have worked up a good reputation, including a reputation of equality!

"Twenty-one!"

Cybrogs have their own reputations.

After the Cold War, America searched for more and more means to assert it's manifest destiny across the world; but it wasn't the fifty states, like terrorists would have the world believe, but an Anglo-American corporate alliance.

Aurora became the knight.

See, between the years 2000 and 2015, the UK and US enforced mandates to remove ballistic weapons worldwide.

First, guided munititions removed these fiery-serpents, but later, hypersonic slugs, then lasers, used to destroy the evil hiding in cities.

With death taken out of tyrant hands, murderers needed a new arms dealer, with an acceptable weapon.

American industry provided a hypersonic transport capable of seating hundreds of people.

President Reagan's "new orient express" could carry bombs.

Fleets were sold on four continents, but there was a catch; artificially intelligent transponders, encased in synthetic globes of diamond, forbade the military use of the passenger planes.

All planes up-linked with Space Force if tampering was detected.

Warlords bought legitimate machines, and legitimate machines they stayed.

The corporate plot, perfected at Groom Lake, revolutionized the world.

Smart fascists did all they could with the scram jets, but new quantum-encrypted code refused to mesh the jets to cruise missiles, or anything other than Aurora HST airframes.

Only the Anglo-American corporations use these crop sheers as swords, and with ballistic missiles banned and destroyed world wide, (except in submarines), no one had first strike capability anymore.

The City of New York

"Zack should be hyped in by now, you think?"

Walker thought, but he remained still too psyched to speak.

"Remember when everyone couldn't stop saying internet? Can you guess the 'it' that follows hyper?"

Following people from hyper planes, Iria and Walker passed a hyper exit to a hyper rail, a maglev, to hyperventure through NYC, the hyper city, where most people remain hyper linked to the New York Stock Exchange through most of the day.

From the hyper rail, Iria and Walker hyper walk on hyper belts, the new trollys, to a safehouse of SIP- Simon Ichabod Presscot- owner of HYPERVAULT.BIZ, an illicit banking site.

"A recent study say 80% of people who use the word 'hype' in a sentence can't define 'hyperbole."

That's not interesting to know.

"Though ninety percent of people say this year's X Games will be all hype, though psychologists say they're just being negative," Iria reasoned, "Though the study was biased, because everything is hyped equally in commercial media, except things related to the past, the enemy of the latest hyped trend, deemed 'cool."'

Nano followed the internet, of course, though economists, trying to dump stocks, predicted biotech would follow.

In they're dishonest strategy, they further recommended dot com investing even after the dot com bust.

Average people, following the trend, lost savings back then, and it's worse this time, only, the guilty are emigrating to space, avoiding prosecution.

Old truths seem like lies to the losers, until they don't really believe anything.

Old truths can herd like common wisdom, but still it leads like a lie.

Most people are aware of William Shakespeare's proverb: "The pen is mightier than the sword," but only the successful few are aware of the sagely advise in Blade Runner.

The "Eye of the tiger" line from Rocky would suffice, however, if people could amend that advice themselves.

"Lady, I understand you're on a winning streak, but if you say _we're taking over! _

One more time, I'll have to ask you to leave!"

_Boy! These people work in a casino, so how can they be such fogies?_

_Cyborgs always have people stashing away fun- what's so threatening, anyway?_

Une shrugged.

"Haitian witchdoctors are taking over!"

Welcome to Rural Louisiana! Imagine you've just laid a video camera over a ridge, and now you're crawling under the thorny brush allowed by the seasonal fire ban, and you're un-spooling fiber optic cable.

The going is tough and it's a steamy day, but at least God's razor wire shades your back.

You've bugged your own cables, and through augmented reality glasses, you see from your previously lain cameras.

You see cabins and trailers in your first cameras, and in others, you see ideal wooded or cleared high grounds, as important to soldiers as the board's center is to chess pieces.

At this time, people aren't moving around, but that will change in a few hours, that's just human or humanvampire nature.

The Peacecrafts' have left for the day, but you're not surprised; these places are rented for night, after all, and really doesn't have much of interest the rest of the time, except amateur astronomers, who have sleeping habits like bats, or true vampires, so, you're lucky to find one awake.

Surely, you haven't been spotted, for they left with Relena's friends and a bag of money.

Many boats, and Mexico, will let teens gamble, watch shows, and drink whatever they like.

You have to watch over things anyway, because people count on you to stake it out.

"Oh yeah, cybernetic soldier sinks the eight ball!"

Une didn't know why those skinheads found themselves on this ship, but she knew she'd baited them enough.

"You'll be sorry about gloating around us, Terminated!"

_Was that a joke? At least they recognized me as a German cyborg!_

Backspin; Une clutched and marine styled a pool ball toward the lead man's head, but it broke downward, impacting just above the groin.

She plunged her pool queue under the second man's swastika-laden arm, side stepped past him, clutching his wrist, and wind milled the arm unnaturally.

After a groan, the German side-power-kicked the pained and shaved nazi over the table.

She slid beside the recovered bearer of the fleshy head, and dropped a knee on his Hitler-hailing hip.

"Told you we were taking over!"

This is such a small spot, but it's an underdeveloped spot, nonetheless.

A monolithic dome house holds a niche, nestled between two condos.

This safe house truly is a house.

On second examination, this house held it's own in cubic area.

Nonchalantly, Iria and Walker walked between two patches of grass, leaping distance in length, easily.

A convincing impersonation of a Day Trade Analyst helped with the door.

"I'm glad you caught me at this time. I was just stepping out to skate at the park!"

Walker said his own pleasantry and let himself in.

"Have you ever bid on the floor?" Iria asked a real question as the door closed. She's heard that's a good one to ask.

"Yeah, I've been one of those guys, but Sip turned me over here. I was on the Tokyo Exchange."

"Were you recruited there?"

The trader shook his head.

"Hong Kong, formally, but yeah, I spoke with men in Tokyo first."

Two well-ironed Shoalin Warriors searched and picked weapons from Iria and Walker.

They were Caucasian, not Asian, but Iria knew Shoalin fighters.

"Let's go to the visitors room," the warriors led the way.

Unlike places Prescot liked to visit, this place was drunk in Gothic mystery.

"I feel tempted to use Fox Mulder's line," Walker cracked.

They journeyed the entire nightly row, and entered the lit room.

Their hearts stammered.

_Hey! W-what h-happened here?_

Before the bounty hunter duo stood the coolest image a power-lusting twelve-year-old boy could see; a pair of muscle-shirted strapping males with impossibly "cool" chain-fed heavy multi-barreled cut-down fully automatic pieces of human-butchery, complete with eye-catching chrome-incased shells studding the ammunition belts (they were the belts, in all honesty).

Turreted pen-lasers clearly marked foreheads for destruction.

Miniature missiles, or maybe guided fleshettes or darts, stared warningly at the laser-points.

"Consider yourselves arrested," Quatre demanded, exhibiting his masterful piece.

Afmad gestured for everyone to retrace the path, waving his gatling minutely.

"Sip, how'd they sneak in with weapons?"

The banker could only shrug, awestruck as he was.

"The camera grid is looped, Sir. Time for people to lose faith," from a W.E. utility van, Noin alerted that Rashid was leaving the vehicle for the door.

Seconds later, Iria and Walker came face-to-face with a live ape-man!

Hopefully, no, surely any eyewitnesses will lose credibility over what heshe would report.

Heero added a nice touch; he added a flickering effect on Quatre and Afmad's guns.

He overdid it a little, having the guns phase in and out of existence, mistakenly, but no harm came of it, for Walker and Iria had their backs turned.

Much unlike Une, Relena signed on for a _sanctioned_ fight.

Yeah, really, a prizefight kickboxing match against a champion lady Thai boxer!

For an entrance fee of three hundred dollars, she can win one thousand for every survived two minute round, and ten thousand for a knockout!

Boy, the Thai boxer was only a welter weight, but she still had to tilt her head down, to fully eye her challenger.

Undeterred, Relena laced up her gloves and tied back her hair for a duel of fists.

She also proudly wore her Romanian flag-patterned tank and boxers, while the champion showed her colors.

After a referee briefly orated the rules and code of accepted conduct, the still-popular ex-pro wrestler announced the fight's beginning.

The dog-like posturing and probing began.

5

Nothing could be more unfair; Quatre Winner stole two really important bounty hunters right in front of his face!

Fumed, yes, Zack Hamlet fumed.

"Your security couldn't strive to be idiots, could they? Come on, Simon, they were wearing summer cloths, yet they sneaked in with gatling guns!

I brought my business here because I thought you were reputable, but instead you have standards below inept!"

Ouch.

What could Sip say? His security features were the most intrusive on the market, without being cancerous, that is.

"I'm sorry- unless it was some sort of illusion, I can't explain it without wormhole physics," was all he could think of.

Zack scoffed, saying:

"Or maybe someone dropped the ball, or was bought!"

Ouch!

"Zack, maybe so, but let me make up for it, I beg for a chance!"

Wow.

How could anyone reject free help from- oh yeah, a banker.

"Sorry, but I'll have to put that on hold, and fix the problem[s] at hand myself."

Hurricane season hasn't really started yet, but a tropical storm is dissipating on track to South Carolina in early July 2023, and the best way to avoid a conspirator tempest, is to fly into a real tempest.

That was the plan when Noin filed a course for the historic city of Havana, via a wide hook around the American South.

Although designed for flight at 70,000 feet, Captain Noin ordered Rashid to hold 90,000 until the storm is cleared.

Only Winner Enterprises' modifications make this possible, but they can ride the storm.

That seemed the best time to take the controls, as the storm loomed in.

The Yowie relinquished control over to Noin; he sluggishly retired to a bunk.

"Hey Afmad, we've never flown _Corona_ like this with the boss inside, so could you give him our first turbulence warning?"

Afmad followed through on the good idea.

"Buckle up, Sir, we're not exactly pushing the envelope, but we're flying well over a tropical storm!"

As usual, the shaking of teacups is the only evidence of turbulence in the cabin, but outside a giant eddy cycled in the slow rotation of a gray theatrical wormhole.

Once beyond the storm, Noin switched off the transponder, as Rashid Kurama flushed an emergency beacon from a lave-like dispenser.

"We'll release a statement we _dropped it_ later," Noin said offhandedly.

A freak accident.

The game is five card draw, the jokers are wild, and Count Milliardo Peacecraft is dealing this low stakes hand.

Even a novice should be able to guide the jokers for a three-of-a-kind, but a dealer with vampire blood can stretch out a royal flush, and avoid detection.

Unfortunately, one can't shuffle cards to many permutations before one becomes suspect.

The best he could do was string out the con as so: bait the Arizona dude-ranch owner with three-of-a-kind (three aces, to put stars in his eyes), and cut ace, king, queen, Jack, and ten, in diamond suit to his partner-in-con, Relena's friend, Jewel.

Now, to insure a successful con, the Count of course...

1.Keeps a poker face.

2.Let's cowboy place bet.

3.Raise the bet.

4.Let's Jewel pitch in a raise.

5.Fold.

As it turns out, the forth player stays, with an unknown hand, but it doesn't matter, for nothing trumps a royal flush.

Betting reaches its zenith at $500, but it is sure money, and the players are good sports about the end.

It's an easy thousand, and she shuffles next.

This is what superstition is made of; Jewel saw they're cards, and her own, so she already possesses foreknowledge of the cards reintroduced to the deck.

A little bad shuffling, with few permutations, and she cuts four-of-a-kind for herself.

Now the Count must...

A.Play the hand.

B.Bid high.

C.Bluff. He's a little overdue anyway.

Milliardo's partner leaves the flush intact until it's division among the players, so it's a statistical impossibility to beat her hand.

Ergo, voila! The girl has a winning streak, but next, the poker rules change, but they'll manage, and turn a profit for sure.

At this time, Athena distressfully storms in, saying one player's sister is in trouble with a champion kick boxer.

Milliardo, with haste, excuses himself and receives Jewel's winning chips in a classic of spy field-craft, the brush-pass.

He leaves her free to lose, as Athena collects his own chips for him, and performs her own brush for more chips.

This is where the house sees a chance to insert their own con, as they fill the forth seat with said con.

Although the house still wins, two players avoid losing here, and that's the real victory.

Sorry, Milliardo, but Relena can handle a pro fighter all by herself.

All she has to do is put her cranium at risk so she's open to jab the sternum and ribcage.

As she ducks in, Releana "feels it out," brushing her forehead across the opponent's fingertips.

At this time, the Romanian lands a blow.

The Thai's next hit dissipates at Relena's shrugged shoulder. (Big deal!)

Undeterred, (completely) Relena whipped a cracking jolt at the lower left ribs.

She moved closer, upper cutting a rush, then a torrent of jabs.

Still skipping and sliding, Milliardo's sister punched some more open areas.

Bored of this, Thailand's fighter jumped from her near-kneeling stance to a snap kick... but such intentions are so easy to read!

Relena reacted, brushing into a forklift move, she tilted her opponent, hopped behind, and snapped a back-kick to the lower back.

As the Thai boxer lurched forward, Peacecraft fell to her other foot as she crescent-kicked the fallen.

The head kick quarter-turned the recipient, landing her to the side, whip-lashing the neck.

"Start the countdown!"

"Right," the wrestler-ref returned to duty, counting.

"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten!"

Relena Peacecraft wins in two rounds earning the total of thirteen thousand and seven hundred dollars!

It was near the bout's end when Une received a coded transmission through her receiver.

The encrypted text sank into her mind as it decoded to understandable text.

CORONA WILL FIND YOU

PLEASE DITCH YOUR CRAFT

Thirty-seven symbols, very concise.

It's crackable, but barely, and the message is clear.

Surely, Heero Yuy, the suspected author, didn't expect them to dump into the sea. Instead, Lady Une and the others are just getting a heads-up.

Uh, where is the Count? Ah! He's just now coming on deck!

Another enciphered message flashes in, reading:

EXPECT ETA UNDER ½ HOUR

BRING ALL AFFILIATED

Again, thirty-seven, very impressive, Yuy, and this message is clearer.

The casino's fighter hit the canvas, so at least Une needn't breakup the fight.

"Sister, and Walker, we need to talk," somewhere over the Caribbean, Quatre attempts to engage in conversation with the prisoners.

"About what?" Iria sneered- all prisoners do.

"About threats to humanity," the Robber Baron replied, moving close to the well-wired cage.

"Threats like vampires, including those you protect?"

Quatre placed himself in a desk chair, shaking his head.

"You sound like the other side, Treize, but you work for the other guy, the Austrian, Zack Hamlet. I don't know enough about him, but I hope you can enlighten me about the workings of this guy. Count Peacecraft knows everybody, it seems, but I'm hoping you can add a volume."

He turned away from his chair, and summoned someone else.

"Pagan, please type a record of what they say, will you? I'll need it filed away in Zack Hamlet's folder."

By the sliding of the door, Quatre passed.

The subject is closed.

"Great fighting, Miss Relena!"

"Yeah, you were all that!"

Milliardo and Une said their own complements, much like Jewel's and Athena's, but they also brought news.

"Hey Sis, the jet _My Corona_ will be here to pick us up in a few, so we should all change into our neoprene suits and wait at the rail," said the Count, pointing out said rail.

About this, Relena cracked a smile.

"He's not playing another trick, is he, Une?"

The cyborg slowly wagged her head.

"No trick. The boss is coming, so let's move our butts_, ja_?"

All made a hasty dash inside for the hotel room (No, they weren't planning to stay in a single room all night!) where the group's items waited.

Through the glass-paneled doors, rested a bench and table near a suit of snack machines: a good place to sit.

There, Relena parked the butt Une wanted moving, so she could unlace her shoes.

"The water's warm, so I'll go as I am!"

Not sure Une and the others heard, she shrugged off everyone else, so she could proceed.

Whether attired properly or not, Count Milliardo Peacecraft, Anne Une, and Relena's two friends had a room to loot, and it happened to be full of the group's winnings.

"Guys, we've got to wire the winnings to an account! Athena, come with me. Milliard, you and Jewel keep moving!"

IF grasped point, snaring his own hardcore scuba-skin, green-on-black, and of full length.

Jewel's suit better befitted the degeneration of western culture, too fleshy to retain heat.

Retreating to the bathroom, he suffered a change of heart.

It's not so fleshy as it is flesh-colored.

Did you change out here?" The question's rhetorical.

"Well the door _is _closed, If," she answered defensively, tugging her zipper.

"Let us not waste time, shall we?"

Regaining normal heart-pace, Zechs wasted no more.

"Hold this to your mouth and feign asthma, and remember not to look rushed," Une reminded Athena, palming her whistle, one sharing poor resemblance to an inhaler, but this is thinking on feet, as it's said.

The perfectly fit German seemed perfectly at ease, as she was, turning the corner for the banking booth.

She presented her authentic Winner Enterprises _Pursuit _Card, issued to Anne Une.

"Fortune was my mistress, _Cherie_, yet my stay is drawing short, and I must retire my chips," she charmed the old world charm, being European.

" Mademoiselle Une, I'm curious about your accent," the banker probed, interested? In what way?

"The land of Alsace, Madame, by way of Wurtumburg, the land of my ancestors," she spoke, holding the card in her hands.

"Here's your card, Mademoiselle. You struck gold, hum?"

_Wow, I dropped one French word in a sea of German-accented English, and I tripped a wire! Casino bankers are Samurai blades in the drawer, right_?

"Gracie!"

"Athena, Amore, have you your breath? Dear, the climate, it is helping?"

She escorted her out, still the gentlewoman.

Relena, Milliardo, and Jewel waited at the railing with the newly arrived Une and Athena, out of runway-fresh European designer cladding, and into swimware, when the sky cracked a boom.

The cyborg saw it first, but all new it, even the novices.

At that moment, the floating casino turned port ninety degrees.

In unison, all turned to Une, while she turned to Athena, explaining.

"You didn't think I was really seducing the bank clerk as I was leaving, did you?"

She frowned.

"I palmed a note to her, alright?"

In one quick pass, the old bomber set down.

"Terrorists! Terrorists!"

Men and women scrambled under tables or into the pool, as Une and the gang howled their laughter.

Ms Noin brought the bird parallel, while the Yowie tossed a line close to the hull.

Crazy.

"Norman."

"Thurman."

At the nightclub, two men stare in standoff, waiting for word from Iria and Walker.

Someone's got to say something.

Come on, the silence is killing softly.

"So," Norman broke the silence, kind of.

"So," Thurman could say that much.

"So" has been established.

So what? Or is it...'so what [now]?'

"So, we were put in charge so we could move ahead with the operation," so Norman concluded.

"That is so, so let's move ahead."

"You first."

"You gave all the gamblers a fright, Noin."

Une spoke matter-of-factly, but Italian ears often hear whatever tone fits their expectations.

"Well I wasn't doing it for their benefit," she barked defensively.

" Laughter I heard shouts of 'terrorists'!"

Surprise. Yes, surprise. Noin expected a safety lecture, although the whole idea of landing a two hundred ton mach three bomber in water is a silly half-baked prospect.

Athena chimed in.

"It was all that!"

Jewel seconded.

"Yeah, real daft!"

Milliardo shared a whisper with his sister, then a rush of whispers, as the flight attendant, Pagan, carried towels into the cabin.

"Dry yourselves, then I'll try to dress you," he said, hurling the cluster to Une.

"Will do, Pagan."

"Hey, we're grease-monkeys!" Une admired her own jumpsuit, before comparing with the others.

Hers remained supreme, in the size issue, anyway.

"Sure, your eyes wander _after _they've changed they're immodest wear," spoke Pagan, in irony, as he stuffed away Jewel's fishnet wetsuit.

_Tsk-tsk-tsk_, he thought, _who's facing Judgment Day with this design?_

6

It's now sunset, the hour of Judgment, and Iria hasn't returned.

"We've drilled for this, well, not really, but we drilled with Iria on the red team, so we're close," Brevet General Dynamics addressed Auct, Trowa, and Cathy, making the judgment call, "and I think three A.M. will be high time to storm."

Vampire instincts said otherwise, but how much otherwise, Cathy couldn't say, though something doesn't square, and all present feel it, but what does, with this case?

"Ford says the cyborg returned with the kids, though the human girls left. All wore...gray jumpsuits? Ford can't explain that one, though he hopes Abdul can touch the subject," Auct read his speech, related to Ford's surveillance, obviously.

"I think I can explain," boasted Abdul, "the cyborg, one Anne Une, took the people of interest to a riverboat casino, the _Cochin China_, where she checked out of the hotel a quarter hour before a delta winged plane landed dangerously close beside the boat. They must have changed as the _Corona _picked them up."

All gulped.

"Yeah, that's pretty weird. Have you heard about the emergency beacon in the Atlantic?"

Nope, but you're connecting the dots here.

"Anyway, it belonged to _My Corona_, says the Coast Guard and NTSB. I think we should wash our hands of this business, 'cause we don't understand anything."

Preschoolers can connect dots, so what's wrong with you?

"I think W.E. is still catching up."

All laughed at the unintentional bumpkin speak of Trowa.

He grinned, understanding.

"Although Solomon Grundy here sounds the moron, I agree," Auct seconded.

A drawn blank.

"Grundy, Justice League, Superman? Any of you read comics?"

That's cool, never mind.

"We dropped a guy to recon the commune this very day, and mission details would depend on what he finds," Iria spoke vaguely, hoping enough variables in the equation would beg Quatre to abort any notion of trap-setting.

"A vampire bodyguard of Norman's, the Master Treize's very own Trowa, replaces my guy at sunset. General Thurman Dynamics, Earth Sphere Army, will plan the op in my absence."

Pagan just typed the same old routine, the waltz these prisoners dance.

He's being truthful enough, but what difference does it make when the guy doesn't know anything?

"Can you tell me about rehearsals?"

Iria recounted Trowa's heroics at the paintball range.

Whenever possible, she downplayed the roles of her own people, if she couldn't omit them.

_That was epic_, Pagan thought, in all seriousness, impressed by the vampire tale.

He asked more about the vampire, and learned he had a twin sister, and he also learned how he fought bravely when he first encountered Iria.

The prisoner spoke of Cathy with the same level of respect, opening Pagan's imagination.

_Could I be like that, if I could have one of them change me? Or would I be just as dull, like Milliardo Peacecraft? _

He then spoke of what Quatre wanted to hear, news of the old sagely Zack Hamlet.

_Sounds like at least one vampire grew old, but he still has power of observation, it sounds. Could it be only the dull smart ones grow old?_

A scant hour before sunset, Colonel Afmad Hill, Israeli Defense Force, (on leave) carefully settled the old bomber on Cross Lake, to the far west, within sight of South Lakeshore Drive.

"From here we can meet Highway 169, and head north for stargaze central," he informed the cheery crew.

"We'll be driving the tour bus of Brad Casey, who's touring New Orleans clubs this month, recording a live performance DVD," Noin added, before backing from the cockpit, to the cabin.

"That's right, he's not going anywhere."

Afmad followed Noin, mindful to taxi _Corona_ later.

The girls and Milliardo followed Une to an escape door, really the still-existent bomb bay, leaving the cabin.

Quatre and Heero stayed with Pagan and the prisoners, waiting for a coming jump jet.

Hill and Noin prepared a zodiac raft for ferrying the Peacecrafts and company.

"Why did the boss arrange the bus ride?"

Une failed to grasp reason to this.

"Perhaps he felt guilty for putting any dent in the vacation plans, so he arranged something fantastic," wagered Afmad, as he hoisted the raft.

"Yeah, that could be so."

"You'll be taking the normal exit door, once we pull the craft under _Corona_."

Having said this, Lucrezia dropped Gouch, the crew's robot, into the blue.

Slowly, the raft floated away.

"Let's go."

"Near the bow of the bus, we see Brad's GAMESTATION console, with the best LED display you can find, 'cause the law forbids holographic game displays in vehicles, you know? All these controls are wireless and strap able. They also have multi-axis rumble," Une gave a guided tour for the teens, starting with games.

"A good _Dragon_ program allows the player to scroll lists with verbal command, a must for multiplayer games. Previously, the GAMESTATION used parallel listings, and most players still use that one."

Une walked on.

"Next is his mobile studio. His MIDI instruments," he waved his hand, "percussions around the plugged-in drums. He keeps demos from these recordings in his Mac, sometimes burning the concepts to disk, so he can pass them around."

They walked again.

"The kitchen is here. He keeps a rotisserie for keeping things warm. Basically, this is a personal deli and sandwich shop."

To the bedroom.

"Here, you see he violated the law with this Dolby surround video projector, with the stereo to match.

The bed actually performs a pet scan to learn how best to satisfy the sleeper. I can't be sure how many gadgets are networked here until I jack in," the cyborg finished.

"Further on you'll find a game room, a bathroom, and a writing lounge, but you can figure out all that."

Trowa, the oblivious Uberkommando of all uberkommando, the Lancelot of vampires, jumped into the purple haze of sunset, kissing the sky like a good airborne soldier, completely free of his transport, a gutted, ugly, EP-3 Orion, the least sexy spy plane Lockheed ever built.

A super soldier needs his uber instrument, so he packed Cathy's railgun, retooled for the sniper role.

An "omni scope," an augmented reality environment, provided complementary footage from Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar, and liquid nitrogen-cooled infrared, gave him omni vision of the battlefield.

Both sensors came from Romanian-funded NASA flying wings, which have been flying over for months, to the annoyance of the astronomers.

The feed "leaked" to Trowa as it linked down to Houston.

(NASA, sympathetic to science-minded space-nuts, carefully flies patterns over uninteresting portions of the sky.)

After much freefall, he pulled the ripcord, slow dancing, as it were.

Yeah, he was experienced; landing seemed natural, which is a good thing, since vampires can't count on blessings.

Clank!

Locked behind a heavy steel door, Iria and Walker met two other men locked in darkness.

"Don't feel morose, newbies, they light the room at daybreak, and we can exercise a setting."

"And they hand us tea in recycled Styrofoam cups."

Walker knew those voices to be those of (in order of dialogue above) Duo Maxwell and WuFei Chang.

WuFei: "How'd they catch you?"

Walker: "They followed us to Empire City- long story."

Duo: "Is this divide and conquer?"

Iria: "They're veteran players, I guess."

Walker: "Can we break out?"

Duo: "We don't have much time, either way-"

WuFei: "So we could just get some rest."

Iria: "You've got nothing to lose there, but I have comrades out on the swamps, so my fight isn't over!"

Duo: "Good night."

WuFei: "Same here."

Walker: "Lemme help, Dawg."

Iria: "Appreciated, Playa."

Walker strutted to the stainless steel toilet, gave it a wicked kick.

He did it again.

He gave some soccer-style kicks.

Walker struck gold, and proceeded to the sink, which he jumped on, planting his feet down hard.

Iria's friend tossed a tantrum until the sink collapsed under him.

"Now we let the water rise," Walker whispered, taking a high bunk.

Within minutes, a commonly overlooked flaw in cell design became apparent; the room was watertight.

Duo grumbled about a wet floor, and turned away from the "clowns."

A few minutes more, and the bottom bunks grew soggy.

"Now you've done it: Winner Enterprises wet work leaves four dead!" WuFei and Duo co-occupied the top bunk.

The water level grew and grew, until four heads held dearly to the ceiling, purchasing more room in the undersized ventilation ducts.

"What did you think to-"

Something gave, for a crack broke through the other ambient noises.

Gurgles and the sound of falling water fell in wake of the crack.

"Jackpot! We are free men!" Walker beamed with pride, as the suction pulled them to the doorway.

THUD!

Four tailbones smacked in synchronicity, reinforced with the water to fill the cubic area for a cell accommodating up to six adult males.

Remaining flooding brushed the door, and four inmates, free.

Way to McGyver out of a jam.

"Way to McGyver out of a jam, Walker. I guess I wasn't fair to you," Duo said, prompting a protest from WuFei, who wanted to say that.

"Oh, let's just go," said Iria, ushering them to a locker room, "let's hope someone keeps their keys in their locker."

"You could have unscrewed the pipes, you know!"

Oh yeah!

Beside WuFei's point, Walker's plan seemed perfectly elegant.

"Try this one," Iria pointed at a locker with black silk fabric hanging out.

One swing of a pipe, and the lock is not a problem.

"Yep, one Vercase tie, and keys for a Farrari Maronello!"

Alarm klaxons sounded, and the gang heard rustling of guards.

"We know the exit!"

Out the door, unlocked from the inside, Iria ignites the engine as she enters the parking lot, feet away form Heero's privileged space.

"I drive!"

The Italian car gunned in reverse before the scrambling guards phrased "freeze!"

"They stole my auto, Auda, my _Silvia_!"

Auda, stroking the land with his 20-5 vision, seemed detached.

"The car that proves I'm not a nerd- Iria and her geeks stole it!"

_He never drove it anyway, unless that French Swiss girl was around, anyway_, Auda thought, visually combing the grass for that fanged wraith.

"Give her a lobotomy with some bullets, will you, Auda? She's as evil as they come."

Auda sighed, focusing.

"Go bother someone **not **dueling invisibility," he grumbled, still looking away.

"I can help," Yuy pleaded, "just look at this aura map!"

The Troodon did, astounded.

"I see her!"

He made a mental note not to beat Heero to within an inch of his life for holding out, while he lined his Dragon TOW missile sight up on the vamp's general location.

"Yuy, you know I'll kill you, but, thanks."

Trowa, the warrior elite, settled behind his self-nominated staging area, a patch of dry sod on the side of the hill, so slight it's more of a berm, facing away from the cabins.

To his right, he saw his sniper perch, a drainage ditch, now defunct, but still a place for ducking into.

He reached for two radios, both in his webbing pouches, held them together while pressing **talk** simultaneously. He did it again.

That's the signal, repeated interference sounds.

Putting the radios away, he- scrambled from an incoming smoke-trail!

A hair-raising event, an explosion rocked him into his ditch, planting his face into drought-caked hardness.

Fragmented dirt, the lion's share of shrapnel, paddled off his back, Lilliputian fists barraging his rising back.

_Who sold me out? The South Africans? The Bounty Hunters? Or could someone still with us have sold me out?_

He shot incoming skeet, but held no illusions. More missiles will follow.

The resultant inferno masked his dash into Taylor's flesh-eating thicket, where he opted to abort his mission.

A third missile followed him in, detonating into a well-grown birch, miraculously grown in a pine tree farm.

_What technology is this?_ He felt troubled, and it wasn't about the savior tree, which splintered into his back, lurching him into a neck-breaking (for mortals) flight headfirst into a stump, but about the shooter's tracking abilities.

_I would have welcomed being betrayed to this! _

Pain shuddered through his bones, yet still he slapped away the reaper's hand, crawling for his life.

A rifle bullet ripped open a beehive, sending a cascade of comb, honey...and enraged bees crashing down.

"He's out of missiles, but he's still out to get me." More rounds splintered stone, wood, and an anthill, into rains of chaos.

Trowa futilely moved for his fallen rifle, but it shattered also.

Hope dwindling, he opted for a Notre Dame gambit.

In all the fervor of such a Catholic student-athlete, the vampire galloped to the right, rushing over the mound when, in his estimate, he'd flanked the cabin's facing side.

He unholstered his secondary gun, an AKMS submachine gun, while cutting for the corner, a possible blind spot.

It worked, for, while the gunner still held a line-of-sight, poor placing rendered the weapon unstable, allowing the vampire to cover most of the kilometer separating the cabin from the berm.

Trowa's salvo leaped through the window, skirting over an orange iguana's head.

A laptop exploded into millions of sparks, but the sniper remained composed, finally nicking Barton's left arm.

The Romanian still showered his clip through the cabin, instantly slipping another clip.

His peripheral sight spied a robot-carted shotgun; he traded hits.

The mechanical screamed a death-wail, as molten slag erupted skyward.

Bleeding freely, he embraced the house for shielding, as a large cyborg edged around the backdoor, firing a bundle of cybernetically fitted micro missiles.

Trowa hosed as he stumbled into a dinosaur's gun-muzzle.

It punctured a gaping hole of hot blood, while the corner exploded into supersonic chunks of lumber fragments.

He still pulled the gun and shooter from the house as he collapsed to twin knees, grappling with persistent strength.

His struggle plunged his remaining clip into the dino's hip, equalizing the hand-to-hand fight.

Losing the gun, he maneuvered his foot behind Auda's heel, and lifted hard.

He groaned, but they toppled, and Trowa mounted over the lizard.

And hit like a machine gun.

Only to die.

Une ended him with a punctuated typewriter fusillade of her German submachine gun, riddling all she could to save her friend.

"I'll help you, friend," Une gasped, clenching her bruised chest, where an entry wound lay.

"Ja- just... helped me, bud," the troodon murmured, rolling off the slain enemy.

A stone-throw off, Quatre's black helo descended, swirling dust.

Une gripped Auda's three-fingered hand, and supported him, gave him a shoulder.

Men yelled at the landing zone, while others shielded the Peacecrafts, more-or-less gaining on the helicopter.

Auda and Une made their own way; the German lost grip of her MP-5, but didn't stutter a step to the vehicle.

Pulling hands bid them welcome.

Afterward

"Now our top story tonight; an Israeli raid on a major Arab League tank plant seizes an illicit mafia operation!

Saladin Tanks, produced legitimately at day by consortium owners, were also built and funneled through the black market at night!

Israeli officials confirm one dead, a national hero, Heston Hill.

Sources say the bullet came from a distant high-rise window.

On this side of the world- a deadly shootout, or was it?

Residents of a popular astronomer community witnessed a major gun battle!"

Bystanders were interviewed.

"It was like Somalia."

The commentator spoke over cut-scenes.

"Exotic bullets and shell casings littered the site, but no bodies were found, and guns are nowhere to be seen.

Law Enforcement offers no further comment."

Later, the reporter recapped the tank sting, covering the technology angle, praising a new "human emission detector" as being a "major factor" in the raid's success.

He summed up the hour with an interview with a retired veteran of the failed operation in Somalia, and better ops in the WAR ON TERROR.

"Breathtaking job. Heston, I met him a few times, led from the front, and led the charge, like Israeli senior officers do. Tragically, he didn't make it through the door, but the mission didn't fall apart.

Some of those tanks could have fired rounds, but it all ended in seconds, like the hostage rescue missions we've seen before."

"Thank you, Colonel. Tomorrow, Washington's reaction: will the President impose sanctions on Israel for possibly escalating a retaliatory crime wave?

Also, you haven't been mugged lately, but will that change? Experts discuss implications of Israel's raid."


End file.
